


Last of Days

by HoneySempai



Series: A Cord of Three Strands [4]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Petshop of Horrors, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (All Media Types)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supersoldier Peggy Carter, Aromantic Sam Wilson, Counselor Sam Wilson, Don't hurt Bucky Barnes unless you want to get killed so hard you'll die to death, Easter, Everyone Needs A Hug, Everyone is a good bro, F/F, F/M, Gen, Half-Jewish/Half-Muslim Natasha Romanoff to be precise, Jewish Natasha Romanoff, Jewish Steve Rogers, Jewish Tony Stark, M/M, Magic and Science, Mental Health Issues, Missionfic, Multi, Museums, Muslim Natasha Romanoff, Muslim Nick Fury, Other, Passover, Rhodey's here because he is criminally underused, Social Media, Terrorism, in which civil war is avoided because people behave like actual adults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:23:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9133936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai
Summary: After waking up together in a New York they can barely start to fathom before they're called to defend it, Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter head down to D.C., and try to adjust to the 21st century despite the Bucky-shaped hole in their lives.Then Nick Fury is assassinated, and the Carter-Rogers are swept up in a conspiracy that, if executed, could destroy the world they sacrificed themselves to protect. But before they can put a stop to it, the appearance of a certain ghost might just devastate them personally first.





	1. The World Carries On Without You

**Author's Note:**

> I've so been looking forward to this you have no idea. 
> 
> Titles come from ["Last of Days"](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRTfhSaFis) by A Fine Frenzy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW for references to the Holocaust/genocide**

Peggy keeps her maiden name. 

They had joked about it, before; which one of them Peggy would marry if they all made it out alive. Bucky took to calling her "Mrs. Rogers" in their private moments; Steve, "Mrs. Barnes". It had been summer then, and Peggy employed her childhood skill at tying the stems of dandelions into loops, presented them to Steve and Bucky, and announced that since she had supplied the rings, it was her right to refer to them both as "Mr. Carter".

Steve offers to take her name (mostly joking, but willing should she take him up on it). The memory stings as soon as the words leave his mouth, and while Peggy keeps her cool when she waves off the suggestion, Steve wakes up to her crying softly into her pillow later that night. 

They almost don't get married; the risk of the wedding being leaked to the press is a strong deterrent. But setting each other up as their respective powers of attorney, executors, beneficiaries, and so much else individually is too much for them to deal with. One document and done is a far more appealing option. The wedding itself reflects the pragmatism driving it; the ceremony is a five-minute affair in a conference room at the Triskelion on a Sunday morning, with Sharon and Antoine Tripplet, in honor of his grandfather, signing their license for them, though Sharon does help Peggy win a dress from the 40s off of eBay, and Steve dons a tallit and kippah for the occasion. Maria, who has officiated a few bums-rushed SHIELD weddings with the power vested in her by the Internet, also helpfully supplies the glass for Steve to crush underfoot, as a wedding present. They "honeymoon" for the afternoon at the nursing home where Michael is staying; he teasingly threatens Steve to treat his kid sister right or else, and two minutes later forgets who Peggy is. Their wedding night is spent curled quietly in each other's arms, breathing each other in, thankful that at least they remain. 

Pepper and Bruce respect their wish for a lowkey affair and send cards. Tony sends a box full of every kitschy Cap-themed novelty item he can get his hands on, from magnets and buttons to a cookie jar and waffle iron. The lingerie done in the style of the old USO chorus girl outfits, however, is from Natasha, cosigned by Clint, who attaches a post-it note chastising them for not inviting them to the wedding ("Answer your phone sometime!" Steve texts her; he's finally getting the hang of it). Thor makes a special trip to bring them Asgardian mead, which is their favorite wedding present by far.

Steve takes up running. Peggy finds a ballroom dancing club that meets once a week. She starts going to church, and about two weeks later Steve finds a shul that he's comfortable with. They feed the homeless cats around their building, and then the homeless people at a local shelter; Peggy has a lot of fun dressing herself and Steve up so they won't be recognized. Steve is called upon by Make-a-Wish fairly often, and keeps every appointment he can; Peggy gives guests lectures at GWU for the Women's Studies and History departments. 

When they can, of course; SHIELD keeps them busy. Between both of their backpays they could easily never work again, but Howard and Phillips and Gabe and DumDum and Morita had started the organization in their memory, and they couldn't rightly turn their backs on that. They avoid passing by the Memorial whenever they can, however; **SGT JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES, MARCH 10 1918 - MARCH 5 1945** is the first gold plate on the wall and not easily missed.

But by all accounts it's a perfectly fine life they've set up for themselves. Living away from "home" has helped; they don't have an old version of D.C. to compare their lives to, and a fresh start was advised by everyone involved with the Avengers Initiative. It seems to have worked; they catch themselves being mostly content, even genuinely happy at times, as the months start to pass and they can't help but settle into their new environment. So when Steve approaches Peggy with the news of someone he laps during his morning run--"He's a pretty good-lookin' guy. He was in the Air Force, if his shirt's anything to go by."--Peggy hesitates, but gives him the okay to approach. 

(The nature of their relationship to Bucky seems to be widely known, although not universally believed.)

It's been time to move on for the past three years, or so they know they'd be told.

*

"Need a medic?"

"I need a new set of lungs," the man grumbles good-naturedly at Steve from where he's sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree. "Dude, you just ran like...thirteen miles in thirty minutes."

"Guess I got a late start." 

"Yeah? Well, shame on you. You should take another lap." He very purposely blinks. "Did you take it? I assume you just took it."

Steve laughs, offering his hand. "Steve Rogers."

"Yeah, I kinda figured that out on my own," he says, accepting the offer to be hauled to his feet. "Sam Wilson."

"What unit you with?" Steve asks, gesturing to his shirt. 

"58th Pararescue. But I'm working down at the VA now, in the Psych Department. I run a couple group sessions."

"Well, I know what _half_ of that is."

Sam looks confused for a moment, and then laughs. "Oh yeah, [the 58th wasn't around back then](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/58th_Rescue_Squadron)." His gaze sweeps Steve in a way that reminds him of a few women he met on tour. Looks like it's going well. "Jot that down, you should look us up," Sam says, gesturing with his chin toward the notepad-shaped impression in Steve's pocket. 

Steve mock-salutes and digs out the notepad. Sam watches his hands as he does so, obviously checking out the wedding ring on Steve's finger. 

"Where's the missus?" News of their marriage had eventually broken, conveniently timed to coincide with a long overseas mission that concluded long after the public stopped actively caring. 

"Peggy's at home," Steve says, as he scribbles down _58th Pararescue (Air Force)_. 

"She know where you are?"

"She does, actually," Steve says, in what he hopes is an ambiguous enough tone to confirm Sam's suspicions, if he has them, or to be ignorable should Sam not be aware or amenable. "Anything else I should put down, while I have your attention?" he asks, brandishing the notepad playfully at Sam.

"While you have my..." Sam snorts and rolls his eyes. "Like I haven't been dreaming of the day Captain America asks for my help since I was, like, six years old." Steve puts on a look of mixed bashfulness and braggadocio, while Sam's expression turns thoughtful. "Marvin Gaye, _Trouble Man_ soundtrack. 1972. Everything worth catching up on, all in one go." Steve dutifully writes it down as Sam regards him, more seriously this time. "How's it going for you two? You guys miss the good ol' days, or...?"

A pang goes through Steve's stomach that he hopes doesn't show up on his face, and he casts his mind about for the list of things he's happy to know exist. "It isn't so bad nowadays. Food's better. Vaccines, those're good; real glad polio's no longer a thing. Internet, of course; Google's been super helpful." _Segregation is illegal_ he almost says, but thinks better of it. 

"Don't know whether or not I should tell you to google "anti-vaxxers"." Steve decides to take a risk and notes it, feeling how intently Sam is still studying him as he does so. "It's your bed, right?"

"I'm sorry?" Steve blinks up at him, inwardly cringing. Peggy is definitely going to veto anyone she deems too forward, and Steve's not so crazy about it, either. 

"Your bed, it's too soft," Sam elaborates. "Y'know when I was over there, I slept on the ground, used rocks as pillows. Now I'm home, I've got an actual bed made for an actual human being, and..."

"It's too soft," Steve repeats. "Too soft and too big." No matter that he and Peggy squished themselves into a bed that was technically a size too small for them; there was a cold draft in the phantom space where their third should be, that no amount of modern heating and blankets could do away with.

Neither of them are sure if he's flirting with Sam or not now, though Sam guesses not, judging by the way Steve's gaze has cast itself downward seemingly without him noticing. He's spared from trying to revitalize the conversation by the sound of Steve's phone beeping; Steve excuses himself with a finger upheld in the air and turns away. 

**She Who Must Be Obeyed:**  
_Mission alert. Extraction imminent. Meet at the curb. Ur wifey's with me & we got Starbucks :D_

Steve rolls his eyes fondly and exasperatedly. He'd change the name Natasha had put herself in as on his phone if he could figure out how to do it. She'd set Peggy as just a bunch of heart emojis, which Steve is quietly fine with.

"Well, Sam. Duty calls." He slips his phone back into his pocket. "Well, duty texts, in any case. Thanks for the run." The grin he plasters onto his face is a cheeky one. "If you can call that running."

"Oh. Oh okay." Sam crosses his arm. "I see how it is."

Steve gives him a thumbs-up, and then winks for good measure. He'd never had to be smooth before--he and Bucky had been too young when they met to use actual moves on each other, and Peggy went for the straightforward besides--and he hopes that worked. 

"Wait, here, before you go." Apparently it did. Sam holds out his hand, and Steve hands him the notepad. "You and/or your wife ever wanna come down to the VA, make me look cool in front of my coworkers," he says as he writes, "that's our address and the main number. And..." he skips a line to write another nine digits. "My cell."

"All right, thanks," Steve says; Sam is a little transparent, on both counts, but it's sweet.

A car revs its engine at them from a few feet away, and they glance over to see Natasha, Peggy in the backseat, sitting by the curb.

"All right, darling?" Peggy calls from the open window. 

"C'mon Grandpa," Natasha chimes in, beeping the horn a little bit. "You're gonna be late for Bingo."

"That's hilarious. You should be a comedienne." He gives Sam a parting wave, which is reciprocated, and pads over to the far side of the car. 

"You must be Steve's running buddy," Peggy says to Sam, as Steve slides into the backseat beside her.

"Sam Wilson at your service, ma'am," Sam says, sticking out his hand, which Peggy takes through the open window. "Agent...Carter, I presume?"

"Got it in one," Peggy says, obviously pleased. "It's very nice to meet you, Sam. Wish we could stay to chat..."

"Raincheck?"

Peggy smiles at Sam's hopeful expression. "I'll come running with Steve one of these days."

"I'll look forward to it," Sam says, now grinning as he steps away from the car. "Nice meeting you, Agent Carter. Agent Romanoff," he addresses Natasha, who gives him a somewhat sly smile in return.

"Talk to you soon, Sam," Steve says, leaning over Peggy so he can look Sam in the eye.

"Later, man."

Natasha revs the engine again as her own goodbye, and pulls out onto the road, rolling up both passenger side windows as she does. Steve takes the time to properly kiss Peggy hello before settling back into his seat.

"So he's cute," Natasha says brightly.

Steve sighs loudly, picking up the cup from the backseat floor cup holder and taking a sip of the coffee the women had brought him. "Yeah. Yeah, he is."

"Stats?"

"Air Force, I was right," he directs the last part at Peggy. "Works at the VA in the Psych Department nowadays. Likes Marvin Gaye, whoever that is."

"That's all you got?" Natasha tsks, after Steve goes quiet. "You are _so_ not a spy."

"I'm not, in fact."

"Peggy?" Natasha glances at her female companion in the rearview mirror. "What'd you think?"

"Well, he called me Agent Carter, so I'm rather well-disposed towards him already," Peggy muses. "I agree that he's a good-looking man. Clearly interested in at least some of us. What all did you two talk about?"

"Not much, we only got a couple minutes before you guys texted me."

"Ouch," Natasha pipes up. "Sorry for cockblocking you."

Steve chokes on the sip he was taking, spluttering half of it onto the lid of his coffee cup.

"Hey, be careful, this car's a work vehicle."

"Na _tash_ a!"

"Love it. Looking for a threesome, and he scolds me for using naughty language."

"We're not "looking for a threesome", Nat," Peggy says, as Steve tries to suck the spilled coffee off the lid before it can splash. "We're perfectly happy with it being just the two of us. But, if we meet someone who we think could become a third, _permanent_ partner...well, then we meet someone."

Natasha doesn't have an immediate snappy answer to that, and she fills up the time with making a turn. Once straightened out she asks, rather straightforwardly, "Did you get his number?"

"I did," Steve says, still a little grumpy.

"When you gonna call him?"

Steve shifts uncomfortably, and then shrugs. "I dunno."

"You _don't know?_ "

"I don't know, I just..." Now that the adrenaline of actually talking to Sam is receding, a bit of the initiative has gone with it. He looks at Peggy, who seems to understand, going by the way she takes his hand and squeezes it. 

Three years really isn't that long a time.

"Natasha," Peggy says. "We should probably fill Steve in on the mission."

"Business before pleasure, got it." Natasha reaches up and presses a button on the ceiling; a small screen descends, blinking to life as it slots into place. A man's face appears on the screen in a small box in the upper lefthand corner.

"Hey, Cap. Agent," he adds, seeing Peggy beside him.

"Rumlow," Steve greets, while Peggy makes a short noise acknowledging his presence. She can't quite put her finger on it, but there's something about Rumlow that she doesn't care for.

"The target's a mobile satellite launch platform in the Indian Ocean called the Lemurian Star." A blueprint of the ship appears in the greater body of the screen as he names it. "It was sending up its last payload when it went off course, and that's when pirates took it, about a half hour ago."

"What're the demands?"

"Ransom goes to the tune of a billion and a half."

Steve raises his eyebrows. "Why so steep?"

"Because it's SHIELD's ship," Peggy sighs, seeing the look on Steve's face before it even arrives. 

"So it's not off-course, it's trespassing," Steve says flatly.

"I'm sure they have a good reason," Natasha soothes from the front seat.

"You know I'm getting sick of Fury making us clean up after him," Steve says, frowning at Peggy.

"Would you relax? It's not that complicated."

"If we can get back on track...?" Rumlow asks.

"Sorry," Steve mutters, glancing back at the screen. "How many pirates?"

"Twenty-five. Led by..." Rumlow taps his own screen, and what resembles a mugshot appears on theirs. "This guy. Georges Batroc, ex-DGSE, Action Divison. Thirty-six kill missions before the French demobilized him. Guy's got a rep for maximum casualties."

"How many hostages?"

"Triple the pirates. Mostly crew and techs, one officer; Jasper Sitwell."

"What's Sitwell doing..." Steve gives up on that train of thought. As Natasha said, there's bound to be a reason and he's sure to not like it. "All right. We're pulling into the garage now. We'll be on board in five minutes. I want everyone on Strike Jet D yesterday."

"Way ahead'a you, Cap. Five minutes. Over and out." The screen blinks into darkness, and Natasha pulls into her reserved spot in the SHIELD parking garage.

"You know," Natasha pipes up, after the three of them exit the vehicle and the chirp of the doors locking echoes around the garage. "If it doesn't work out with Sam, the barista at Starbucks was making heart eyes at Peggy. I think her name was Angie?"

Steve doesn't dignify that with a response, though Peggy elbows Natasha's side with a blush that can only be described as girlish.

*

"Or hey, maybe Sharon knows someone."

"I'm not getting set up by my own great-niece," Peggy huffs. "I feel as though that's a whole new level of pathetic."

"I'll sweep the deck and find Batroc," Steve is saying. "Rumlow, you and the team sweep aft, find the hostages, and get 'em outta there."

"STRIKE, you heard Cap; gear up."

"Peggy, Nat, I want you guys to kill the engines and wait for instructions from there. And Nat, I'm with Peggy. That's a little creepy. Secure Channel Seven."

"Seven secured. You two are hopeless."

"Coming up on the drop zone, Cap," the pilot announces over the intercom.

"She's the same physical age as you two."

The entry shaft to Strike Jet D opens up, the rush of wind cutting Natasha off, and Steve makes his exit before she can get her bearings.

"Was he wearing a parachute?" one of the STRIKE team members, Rollins, asks.

"No, no he wasn't," Rumlow responds, sounding amused.

"Oh, I'm going to kill him," Peggy mutters, tightening the shoulder strap on her own parachute with an annoyed, jerking tug.

She times her own descent with Steve emerging from the ocean and beginning to scale the ship; she's on deck in time to distract the first pirate from Steve chokeholding him into unconsciousness.

"You need to _stop doing that_." She ducks, letting the shield smash the face of the man who had been sneaking up behind her. She spins and snatches it out of the air before it can fall to the floor, and throws it, catching a third pirate in the neck; it bounces off the man at just the right angle to fly back into Steve's hands. "If you jump out of a plane in front of me one more time, I'm going to divorce you. On your six."

Steve turns on his heel, grabbing a fourth attacker by the shoulders and slamming his face down once, twice, over his knee. To the left, behind Steve, Peggy sees a fifth heading for a fire alarm on the wall of the ship's cabin; she yanks a knife from her belt and throws it, catching the man in the spine mid-back and instantly paralyzingly him, if the way he falls to the floor and doesn't get back up is any indication.

Someone shouts something in French, but before they can even turn to face Pirate #6 he's been shot in the shoulder and goes down.

"I'm just saying, it's really no different than being set up by your sister," Natasha says from mid-air, the smoke from her gun billowing up as she lands.

"Natasha, _concentrate_ , please," Steve nearly whines.

"I'm multi-tasking!"

The rest of the STRIKE team is landing at different spots on the deck, muffled gunshots following in their wake. Peggy strides forward past Steve, smacking his hand both affectionately and frustratedly as she does so, unceremoniously yanks her knife out of Pirate #5 when she reaches him, and gestures for Natasha to follow her below deck, towards the engines. Steve takes a moment to make sure they disappear from sight safely, before he punches the back of the shield, sending it forward into Pirate #7's face, and then heads for the stairwell leading up.

Peggy and Natasha make it downstairs in time to hear a man confirm orders to start the engines over the phone. Natasha has her rappel wire ready, lassoing his neck with it and dragging him toward the railing as soon as he hangs up, and she throws herself over the side of the staircase, shooting the pirates who come rushing on the lower levels at the sound of the man's choked screams. 

Peggy rams her elbow into the back of the man's head, knocking him out, and then whirls around, dropping low and kicking the legs out from under the man rushing her. Her knife finds a temporary new home in his knee, but before she can retrieve it someone grabs her around the neck. He makes the mistake of getting his other hand too close to her mouth, however, and she sinks her teeth into his two last fingers hard enough to hear the bones snap. He releases her with an agonized cry, stumbling back, and Peggy rushes him, pinning him over the side of the railing with her hand smashed up over his nose and mouth.

It takes a second to register that Natasha is no longer dangling over the side, herself. Peggy makes the split-second decision to toss her assailant fully over the side, and before she even sees him hit the ground she's scrambling to fetch her knife and then rush down the stairs.

Natasha's cleared a path all the way down to the main engine, leaving Peggy to pick off the survivors who are coming back to their senses with blows to the head or between the legs. Over the communicator Peggy hears the STRIKE team confirming their positions and readiness in whispers as she steps on one such man, grinding her boot into his neck.

"Agents, what's your status?" Steve asks, hushed.

"Hang on!" Natasha barks, and Peggy hears the buzz of an electric weapon from some distance away. She grabs the nearest tool--a pipe--and swings it into the face of a man who had come up on his knees after her, before running off in the direction of the sound of Natasha's weapon.

"Engine Room secured," Natasha says, but by the time Peggy reaches the main engine, her partner is nowhere to be seen.

"On my mark," Steve says. "Three...two...one."

Peggy waits a second and a half after the sounds of gunshot and a muffled explosion die down to whisper harshly, "Natasha's MIA. Repeat, Engine Room is secure but Natasha is not with me."

There's the sound of glass breaking, and then Rumlow speaks. "Hostages en route to extraction. Hostiles potentially still in play."

"Natasha, do you copy?" Steve hisses. "Batroc's on the move; I need you and Peggy to--"

His voice abruptly cuts off, and Peggy goes for the nearest stairwell leading up to the deck. There are more bodies littering the floor as she makes her way upstairs, thankfully none of which she has to incapacitate further, and she makes it onto the deck to see Batroc desperately trying to land a hit on her husband past the shield Steve blocks him with again and again. She ducks into a shadow, watching as Steve sidesteps another potential blow and grabs Batroc, kneeing him in the stomach once, twice, three times and then throwing him with the fourth; Batroc gets his hands on the floor before he can slam facefirst into it and flips over, twisting in the air before landing on his feet, facing Steve with a sneer.

"Je pensais que tu étais plus qu'un simple bouclier."

Peggy shifts. Steve doesn't appear to notice her, but she knows that he does, if not by the time he shoulders his shield, then as he reaches up to unclip his helmet.

"On va voir."

He tosses his helmet to the ground, and the noise covers for Peggy pulling the trigger. Batroc crumples with a scream as the bullet shatters his right ankle, and Steve tackles him before he can hit the floor, shoving him backwards through a closed door. Peggy hurries forward, her gun raised in case any back-up for Batroc should appear suddenly; she makes it into the doorway to see Batroc unconscious on the floor and hear Steve snap "What are you doing?"

"Backing up the hard drive; it's a good habit to get into," Natasha returns, without looking up from the keyboard she's furiously typing on. Peggy glances up, at the screen hovering above Natasha, and her vision starts to go red.

"What the hell was so damn important that you ditched Peggy--"

"She's saving SHIELD intel," Peggy cuts in, her eyes and gun trained on Batroc now, to force her to keep her cool.

"Whatever I can get my hands on," Natasha confirms.

"Our mission was to rescue hostages," Steve spits.

"No, that was _your_ mission," Natasha says. "Mine was to rescue _information_." She straightens up, plucking a USB drive out of the computer's tower. "And we've all done a wonderful job. We should pop some champagne bottles when we get back."

"You just jeapordized this entire operation!" Steve hisses, grabbing Natasha's arm as she tries to pass.

"I think you're overstating--"

There's a sudden clanking sound of metal hitting metal; Peggy looks down to see a gray canister, the top of it flashing red, rolling to her feet from out the open doorway. She barely has time to yell "Grenade!" before she drops down, grabbing and pitching it back out the door behind her. She launches herself forward, back onto her feet, and stumbles quickly to the shelter of underneath Steve's shield; all three of them duck to the floor behind the desk not a second before the grenade goes off, shattering the wall between this cabin and the rest of the deck in a hail of plaster and glass.

"Okay..." Natasha mutters, as the echo of the explosion gives way to the blaring of sirens, and the ringing in their ears goes from deafening to merely dizzying, had they been normal humans. "That one's on me."

"You're goddamn right it is," Steve grinds out, hauling himself to his feet and raising his wrist communicator to his mouth. "At least one hostile still in play; possibly armed with explosives..." His voice fades as he picks his way through the rubble towards what had once been the door.

"Be thankful that he didn't throw himself on that grenade this time," Peggy snaps, getting her feet properly under her and standing up. "And if you _ever_ pull something like that again, I will _personally_ see to it that you regret it. Is that understood?"

Natasha glances up at her quietly for a moment, before she replies, "Perfectly."

Peggy resists the urge to smack the maddeningly unreadable look off of Natasha's face, choosing instead to turn and follow Steve out onto the deck, leaving Natasha to straighten herself out alone.

*

The grenade was the last gasp of a dying operation, thankfully; Steve incapacitated the thrower with a few well-aimed punches to the back of the head, and the STRIKE team herded the former hostages into the rescue jets, and the captured pirates into the prison jets, that had accompanied Strike Jet D without further incident. Many of the crew had been killed during the initial siege of the ship, and to make sure the Lemurian Star stayed secure while the replacement crew found their places and directed the ship back to port in California, Steve, Peggy, and most of the STRIKE team remained behind.

Natasha left with the hostages, to give the first mission report. She also contacted Tony, in California to plan the 2014 Stark Expo and continue reconstruction of the mansion.

"I was told that you needed someone to vent to," Tony explains with a shrug, when he meets Steve and Peggy at the dock. "Maybe some things to break? Quinjet's not going to DC until tomorrow and I got plenty of excess material just begging to be shattered..."

They initially decline his offer, but after being somewhat browbeaten into staying at the mansion (livable though incomplete) rather than a hotel, they take him up on it. Tony does have plenty of material to break, and he's vastly sympathetic to the tale of Natasha's duplicity ("I like that woman, believe me, she's a hoot and a holler, but you can't trust her as far as you can throw her, and I've tried to throw her..."). It helps, somewhat; Steve is in a lightened-up enough mood to make vague plans with Tony for Passover, coming up in about a week and a half, in New York. The foul temper returns to both of them, however, upon landing in DC the next morning. They don't run into Natasha, so it's Fury who gets to bear the brunt of it.

"You just can't stop yourself from lying, can you?"

Natasha appears to have warned Fury as well as Tony. "I didn't lie. Agent Romanoff simply had a different mission than you did."

"Which you didn't feel obliged to tell us about," Peggy snarls.

"Pardon my French, Agent Carter, but I'm not obliged to tell you shit."

"Those hostages could have died," Steve snaps. "At the very least Agent _Carter_ could have died; Agent Romanoff abandoned her under _your_ direction--"

"You and Agent Carter are two of the best soldiers in history. I wasn't exactly worried for anyone's immediate safety."

"Soldiers _trust_ each other, that's what makes it an army. Not of a bunch of jackasses running around with guns."

"We are not an army," Fury says, putting his hands on his desk and rising. "And the last time I trusted somebody, I lost an eye."

"I can't lead a mission when the people I'm leading have missions of their own."

"It's called _compartmentalization_ ," Fury says, drawing out the word. "We are an intelligence organization. Our business is secrets. And no one can spill the secrets when no one gets to know all of them."

"No one except for you," Peggy says coolly.

That seems to, if not bring Fury up short, at least give him pause. He glances Steve and Peggy over with his one good eye--they've adopted identical crossed-arm stances--and heaves something of a sigh.

"You've got the wrong impression of me, both of you. I do share. I'm nice like that. And I'm gonna prove it to you." He raises his hand, gesturing for them to follow him as he steps around the desk. "Come on. Don't have all day to placate you two."

Steve almost retorts; Peggy is calm enough to pinch his arm and stop him. They follow Fury to the elevator, where he overrides the security system to allow them to accompany him to something called the "Insight Bay".

"My grandfather," Fury says, after a second of tense quiet passes, "operated an elevator for forty years. He worked in a nice neighborhood, got pretty good tips. He'd walk home every night with a bunch of ones stuffed into his lunch bag, and when he'd say "Hi", people would say "Hi" back. Time went by, and the neighborhood got rougher. He'd say "Hi", people said "Keep on steppin'". And Granddad got to clutching that lunch bag a little tighter."

"He ever get mugged?" Steve asks, jaw still a little tight, though he was mugged enough as a kid to be instantly sympathetic.

"Hm. Every week or so some punk would yell out "What's in the bag, old man?""

"And what'd he do?"

"Well, he'd show 'em. A bunch of ones, and a loaded .22 magnum."

"Ah," Peggy says, when Steve doesn't have a response. "Well. That's one way to do it, I suppose."

"My granddad loved people," Fury says, as the elevator slows to a stop. "But he couldn't trust 'em very much, and neither can we."

The elevator doors open, and they almost miss Fury quipping "I know these're a lot bigger than a .22." 

The rows of quinjets lining the tarmacs are children's toys compared to the three airships, more massive than the helicarrier they had taken Loki aboard three years ago, sitting amidst them. Fury's voice washes over Steve and Peggy as he leads them further into the room, explaining the ships as next-generation helicarriers, "synced to a network of targeting satellites. They were _supposed_ to be launched from the Lemurian Star, so we'll have to go with Plan B on that one. But once they're in the air, they'll never have to come down, courtesy of our new repulsor engines."

"Tony's design?" Peggy finally manages to say.

"He had some advice about upgrading the old turbines," Fury says with a shrug. "And no, he's not privy to the details of this project."

"Good," she mutters, the anger at Tony that had been starting to build up in her dissipating.

"After New York, I convinced the WSC that we needed a quantum surge in threat analysis, and these carriers reflect that. The long-range missiles," Fury gestures above him to the weapons in question, "can eliminate a thousand hostiles in a minute. The satellites can read a terrorist's DNA before he steps foot outside his foxhole."

"And do you...think..." Steve says, not realizing that he's begun shaking, "a weapon that can choose targets based on their DNA can't... _possibly_ be misused?"

"Cap..."

"No, no, I get it," Steve cuts him off. "You don't need to start with labor camps, 'cause everything's automated these days. And hell, they ruin the landscape, besides. So this is a great idea, really. Taking genocide to the air. _Wunderbar_."

"Steve," Fury says, his tone deliberately even. "I thought about that. You may have noted that I _also_ have a vested interest in this thing being unable to shoot based on ethnicity. That's why the system can't be launched by an individual. And it can also only target an exact DNA match, not similar ones."

"Oh, so we only have the power to go after people for their _ideologies_ , that's comforting," Peggy mutters.

"We have the power to _neutralize threats_ , Agent Carter." Fury rounds on her, an unimpressed look on his face. "You know I read those old SSR files? The "greatest generation" did a lot of nasty stuff in their day. You two included."

"We did those things to _stop_ mass killings, not facilitate them!" Peggy yelps. "We did them so people could be free! Not so someone else could come along seventy years later with a _bigger_ gun!"

"This isn't Nazi Germany," Fury says, his flat tone taking on a sharp edge. "This isn't Hydra. This is SHIELD, and we take the world as it is, not how we wish it was."

"I need to go. Steve." Peggy takes hold of her husband's arm. "I need to get the hell out of here, _now_."

"I'll see you out," Fury says in a clip. "Right this way." He gestures to the elevator.

"What, you're not gonna hold us here indefinitely?" Steve throws at Fury, even as he and Peggy follow him back to the elevator.

"Contrary to what you seem to desperately want to believe," Fury says, punching in the 9-digit code that opens the elevator from this floor, "I am not a fascist." The doors slide open, allowing Steve and Peggy to step inside. "I just know that you can't win wars on battlefields anymore. And it's high time you two wised up to that fact."

"Don't hold your breath on that," Steve snaps, and the doors shut.

Peggy makes it two flights before she buries her face in her hands. Steve first sets his hand on her shoulder, and then pulls on her, so she turns into his chest, her face buried in his collar as her hands clutch his shirt.

"God, what was it for, Steve? Why did we do it?" Her voice is wet, and he can feel his skin under her eyes going damp. "Why did we have to wake up?"

He puts one hand on her hair, and one on the small of her back, and has no answer for her.


	2. But Nothing Remains the Same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW for mentions of suicidal ideation and torture/rape**
> 
>  
> 
> I don't quite know why but it _really_ annoys me that Bucky's cast as a year older than Steve, and Peggy as three years younger. It just...it bugs the crap out of me.

"You ought to be proud of yourself."

"What makes you say that?"

Michael puts his hands up at her in mock frustration. It's a Friday morning, when, if they're not at the Triskelion or on a mission, Steve usually sees Peggy to Red Maples Senior Care Center to visit her brother while he goes for a run in the neighborhood, rather than his usual route. "Well, you and that husband of yours saved the damned world, I could start there."

Peggy snorts, pushing her hair back from her face. "I'm stealing your water," she says, grabbing the glass on Michael's night table and taking a deep sip. He reaches up for it, flicking his fingers stiffly, and when she gives it to him she keeps her hand on it, supporting him through bringing the glass to his mouth and taking his own swallow.

"And you're still out there, speaking truth to power, Lady Pegsalot. Giving idiots the what-for."

Peggy runs her finger over the rim of the glass, regarding it sadly. Most of the time Michael doesn't know who she works for, so most of her stories are redacted even further than they would have been otherwise, to avoid confusing him too badly; he only knows that she had argued with her boss over some situation that could prove very dangerous for many people. "You know, it's not like I can actually keep the man from doing anything, Mikey."

"Stuff and nonsense. Peggy Carter can do anything she pleases."

Peggy hums in her throat and flashes a weak smile. "Well, I'll appreciate your high, if misguided, estimation of me as I steal more of your water." She tries to give him a mischievous look, to redirect his focus, as she does just that; it doesn't work, as he remains frowning at her.

"What?"

"What, yourself."

"What, _yourself_." She sets the glass back on the night table, not meeting his gaze.

"Margaret."

"Michael." Peggy settles back in her chair, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrow at him.

"Peggy." His hand comes up in the air and lands on her knee, and her heart twinges a little, to feel how weightless and frail his hand is now, when she can only remember it being strong enough to drag her along behind him by the wrist, to beat or nearly beat her at tug-of-war, to help her adjust to holding the weight of a pistol when she announced that she wanted to learn how to shoot. "What's going on in that pretty little head of yours?"

"You know that's not the way to get me to talk," Peggy huffs.

''Sharon's got my thumbscrews; I'm making do." Peggy rolls her eyes. Her thumb comes up to be pressed between her teeth, and then curls around the rest of her fingers as she settles her chin on her fist. "Come on, darling, out with it."

Peggy's mouth twitches a few times, seemingly preparing for words to come out, before she finally speaks. "Michael, do you ever...have you ever thought you'd be better off...laid to rest, rather than in your particular circumstances?"

Michael's face starts by looking insulted, and then screws up when realization dawns, his eyes watering. "Oh, Peggy..."

"Oh no, Mikey, _no_ ," Peggy rushes to assure, squeezing his hand in both of hers and bringing it up, to clutch to her chest. "I'm not...I'm not thinking about doing anything. I don't _want_ to. It's just that..." Her hands come up, gesturing uselessly. "I don't know what it's just. I don't know anything anymore."

"How do you mean, darling?"

She flounders for another few seconds, trying to put coherence to three years' worth of gut feeling. "We...Steve and I, when the plane went down, we knew we weren't...we accepted it, what was going to happen. What we were _hoping_ was going to happen, anyway."

She can conjure up the day in her mind's eye perfectly, how bright the sky was, how frigid the air; lying down next to Steve on the floor of the Valkyrie, seeking his warmth; Steve murmuring something in Hebrew that she hasn't had the nerve to ask him about yet but the memory of which she still uses to lull herself into sleep; that, and the image she'd had of Bucky waiting for them, half-mad and half-amused at them for finding a way to make a heroic spectacle out of their deaths.

"But it...it _didn't_ happen, obviously. We woke up in that awful fake hospital and...and I guess that set the tone, because nothing's actually felt real ever since." She laughs, covering up a sniffle. "And we've tried, you know, we've tried to live like...well, as "normally" as we can; tried to move on, but...there's always, always something. Something to remind us just how...how out of place we are." She brings the heel of her palm up, rubbing a tear out of her eye. "It just...it all changed. Everything changed, but no one...no one learned anything, and we can't...we can't fix it."

"Peggy..." Michael watches her with a knitted brow, puzzling out the best way to approach this. "When did you get so dramatic?"

That gets a real laugh out of Peggy, however short and bark-like. "Steve's a bad influence," she says, wiping at her other eye with her thumb.

"I don't think it all changed as much as you think it did," Michael says, and his grip is softer but no less insistent. "Trust me, I was there."

She brings his hand up, to kiss his knuckles, aching for the mind that's going to forget that fact any moment now. "And I'm so glad you got to live your life, Mikey. I'm _so_ glad."

"And now it's time for you to live yours." He uncurls a finger, to press against the tip of her nose; she tries to hum an agreeing noise at him. "If you're not dead yet then either God's scared of you, which is very likely," Peggy titters wetly, "or He's got a job for you. Maybe both." He grins at her, and she manages a watery smile back. "The world didn't change so much that it's got no use for you or that big lug of yours. You're gonna see that, Pegsalot. I promise you."

She bites her lip, trying not to lose her smile, trying to let his words find a home in her mind. "Thank you, Michael."

They make it about another half hour before Michael gets that questioning look in his eye, the one that prompts Peggy to say "Your name is Michael Carter. I'm your little sister, Margaret. You call me Peggy..." It happens a little bit before his mid-morning tea (a ritual set up by Sharon, who has assured Peggy that Michael is still "incorrigibly English") and soon after Michael seems to have accepted his circumstances, albeit still with questions, an aide comes bustling in with a tray; Steve, right on cue, trails in after her. Peggy signals him to be quiet until she says, "This is my husband, Michael; this is Steve."

"Hey, Mike." Steve lifts his hand in greeting.

"Steve," Michael repeats, barely above a whisper, frowning as the aide, business-like, sets up his tea. "You're a bad influence."

"...well that's one I haven't heard in awhile," Steve replies gamely as Peggy's expression pinks.

"You should make Peggy happy, Steve," Michael continues, unhindered.

"He does, Mikey; he's the best husband in the world," Peggy assures; to drive the point home she rises and goes to Steve, taking his hand and lacing their fingers together. "See?" She holds their hands up, to show off for him. "I'm very happy with him."

"But you're always so sad," Michael protests.

Steve feels a little shake in Peggy's stance, and he bolsters his own, if she needs the support.

"Well I'll be happy the next time you see me, Mikey," Peggy says. "I'll...I'll make sure of it."

This appears to mollify him a little. Peggy puts a little bounce in her step as she walks back to his bedside, to give his cheek a kiss good-bye and promise to be back next Friday. She maintains it as she and Steve wave themselves out of the room, and a few feet into the hallway, before her knee buckles a bit and she leans heavily into Steve's side.

"A bad influence, huh?" Steve tries to tease.

"Sorry," Peggy mutters into his shoulder. "I may have...been a bit melodramatic with him, this time."

"No worries." His hand comes up, to pat her hair briefly. "Home?"

Peggy opens her mouth to say yes. After a beat, a sigh comes out instead, and she straightens up, squaring her shoulders. "Actually...actually, let me check something."

Steve steps out of the way as she swings her purse in front of her and begins digging through it for her phone. He watches her tap on the screen, her brow furrowing as it takes awhile for her to find what she's looking for, and then straightening out when it presents itself.

"We're in luck." Steve comes around her shoulder and she lifts up her phone to show him some sort of schedule. "Your running buddy's got a session going. We could still catch the last little bit of it."

"You wanna go?"

She presses her lips together, and nods. She's just made a promise, after all. "I think it would be good for us."

Steve makes an obviously hesitant face for a moment, before he lets it melt into a weak smile. "All right." He winks at her. "If it'll make you happy."

She swats his arm with the back of her hand. He catches it, and kisses it, and doesn't let it go.

*

"Nick, I work forty floors away, and it takes a hijacking for you to wanna see me?"

"Well, a nuclear war would do it, too." Fury closes the door behind Alexander Pierce as the man strides past him. "Secure office."

"Should I be worried?" the secretary of the World Security Council raises his eyebrows as the shades in Nick Fury's office flip over and seal themselves together tightly, the artificial lights in the office coming up to make up for the blocked sunlight.

"Maybe." Fury passes him and settles on the edge of his desk; he gestures for Pierce to take a seat, and then folds his hands loosely over his knee. "I need a favor."

"You come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married..."

"Be my friend, Godfather," Nick quips, allowing himself a smile. 

"What do you need?"

"I need you to call for a vote. Project Insight has to be delayed."

Pierce blinks. "That's...not a favor, Nick, that's a hearing. An excessively long one. And the WSC is already on my case about the whole mess with the Lemurian Star. If I tell them that you wanna delay the project even further, my ass is grass, and so is yours."

"I realize the enormity of what I'm asking."

"What's bringing this on?" Pierce's eyes narrow. "Something happen?"

"Maybe," Fury says, applying just enough reticence to imply details too numerous and obscure to try to elaborate here. The simple reality was that he had been forbidden to access the SHIELD-issue flash drive Natasha had given him from the Lemurian Star, seemingly by his own order, according to SHIELD's AI. "It could be nothing. It probably is nothing. I just need time to make sure."

"And what if it's something?"

"Then we're gonna be damn glad those helicarriers aren't in the air."

Pierce regards him, and then sucks in a breath between his teeth. "What should I tell them?"

Fury shrugs. "We discovered a programming error." Pierce's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. "One serious enough that it could sabotage the whole operation, to catastrophic effect."

Pierce regards him incredulously for a moment, before sighing. "All right. I'll hold them off at the pass. But you gotta get Iron Man to show up at my granddaughter's birthday. And not just a flyby, all right? He's gotta mean it."

"That won't be too hard," Nick chuckles. "Loves attention, that one." 

Pierce rises, and Fury accepts the handshake he offers. The blinds return to their normal setting as Fury announces the all-clear, and the lock to the door turns in time for Pierce to take the handle. He waves genially as he leaves the office, which Fury returns. 

Fury had hedged his bets, letting Carter and Rogers in on Project Insight. He prays it was an unnecessary move as he glides the letter opener against his fingers, cutting open an excuse to go down to Medical, but the last time he trusted someone he lost an eye.

*

"The thing is...I think it's getting worse."

Steve stops at the entryway to the meeting room the receptionist at the VA had pointed them to, holding out a hand to stay Peggy just slightly behind him.

"I got pulled over last week; cop thought I was drunk," the woman continues, her head ducked down even as Sam, at the podium at the head of the room, gives her his undivided attention. "I swerved...to miss a plastic bag." She gives a sardonic laugh. "Thought it was an IED." There's a ripple of sympathetic noise from the other people scattered about the room. "I had nightmares for three days after. Always the same thing. Megan just...sitting beside me one minute. Going up in smoke the next."

Steve finds himself leaning heavily against the doorframe. Peggy's hand settles lightly on his arm. The movement catches Sam's eye and he glances at them, but when they don't move to come in he doesn't try to beckon them, and turns his attention back to his group.

"Some things you leave back there," Sam says. "Other stuff you bring home with you, whether it comes in a big suitcase, or in a little fanny pack." This earns him a few giggles. "Big or small, the first thing we can do is learn to carry it. Then, we can unpack it. And then, finally, we might be able to put it away." He glances up, assessing the clock this time. "That's our time for today. Thank you for checking your luggage with VA Airlines." A few more laughs. "Have a good week, guys. Don't hesitate to call or email me if you need."

Steve and Peggy hang back, strategically concealing their faces as Sam's group gathers up their belongings and makes their way out. When the last straggler disappears into the outside world, they straighten themselves out and peek back into the room. Sam is still at the podium, chin in hand, grinning at them.

"Well look who it is. The Running Man and his Better Half."

"Steve picks the smart ones," Peggy purrs, and then squeaks when Steve pinches her ear. She retaliates with an elbow to his side. 

"Children, behave," Sam teases, as Steve tugs on a lock of her hair and then purposely looks chastened. Peggy sticks her tongue out at him for a brief moment before turning her attention back to Sam. "How long were you guys out here?"

"We caught the last couple minutes," Steve says, as they shuffle themselves further into the room. 

"We wanted to be here earlier, but there was an accident on the way over," Peggy adds.

"No worries. I won't mark you down for it." Sam flashes them a grin. "So what did you think? Honest opinion."

"It...it hit a little close to home, there, at the end," Steve says. 

"Yeah, well," Sam says, picking up his papers and shuffling them. "We all got the same problems. Guilt. Regret."

"You lose someone?" Steve asks, before he thinks better of it.

Sam pauses, then sighs, and nods. "My wingman, Riley. Riley DiMino. Flyin' a night mission. Standard PJ rescue op, nothing we hadn't done a thousand times before. And then an RPG comes outta nowhere and knocks Riley's dumb ass out the sky. I tried to catch him before..." Sam draws his shoulders up to his ears, and then drops them helplessly. "Nothing I could do. It's like I was up there just to watch."

Steve fights down the sickeningly familiar twist in his gut, but not before Peggy and Sam see the fight play out in his expression. "I'm, I'm sorry."

"Was he your..." Peggy starts gently, as her hand slips around Steve's wrist.

"Oh, no, no, he wasn't..." Sam says, putting up his hands and waving them. "We were buddies, and we, ah...well. We helped each other out, sometimes, after Don't Ask Don't Tell got repealed." Peggy brings a flush to her face as Steve presses his lips together and inward. "But we weren't, we weren't boyfriend and boyfriend, no."

"Ah."

"Doesn't mean he wasn't the most important thing to me out there," Sam says, and Steve nods. "Reason why I didn't re-up. Did the second half of my last tour without him and...I knew I couldn't do a third."

"And you're happier now?" Peggy asks. "Being out...out in the real world, so to speak?"

"Well, the number of people giving me orders is down to about zero, so that's definitely a plus," Sam says, allowing a laugh. "Why?" He tilts his head. "You guys thinking about...getting out? Quitting?"

"No," Steve says, limply.

"That was _hella_ convincing, Steve."

"We don't know," Peggy cuts in. "It's...tempting. But then there's the question of, well, what would we do with ourselves if we did."

"Tag-team wrestling?" That earns him some laughs. "All right, think about it. You guys don't have anything holding you back. You could do whatever you wanna do. What would you do? What makes you happy?"

"Ah..." Steve points at Peggy. "This one."

"Okay, househusband, one down. Agent Carter?"

"Peggy's fine."

"Okay. Peggy. I'm sure you got hobbies you could potentially turn into a career."

"Ah...well, I already shoot things for a living, is the thing."

"...hunting?" Peggy snorts, and shakes her head. "All right, well, good thing I'm not a _career_ counselor, I guess."

"Sorry," Steve offers. 

"Nah, it's okay." Sam shrugs. "Welp. Any idea what you wanna do _today_? The present's always a good place to start."

Peggy and Steve glance at each other, quickly passing ideas through their eyes, and then back at Sam. "Well, actually," Peggy says. "If _you_ happen to be free, it...it might be nice to...get to know you a little. Better."

An interesting array of expressions pass over Sam's face, ending in an incredulous chuckle. 

"Well, you don't have to _laugh_ at me."

"No, no," Sam chortles, waving his hand. "It's not... _you're_ gonna laugh. I was...well, after our little meet-up at the park the other day, I thought I'd...you know you guys've got an exhibit over at the Air and Space Museum, right?" They nod. "Well I was gonna...visit there. Prep myself for the next time we met. Figured going to a museum was a little more, uh, _intellectual_ than stalking your Facebook." They offer awkward noises resembling laughter. "I'm gonna assume you don't want to go."

"Well it," Steve says, his suddenness surprising himself. "It...it might not be a _bad_ idea."

"Yeah?"

"You think so, darling?" Peggy asks, glancing up at Steve. 

"Well I mean..." Steve looks at his feet as he shuffles them. "Can't know where you're going if uh, y'don't know where you're coming from, right? Maybe." He glances up. "Maybe getting an... _objective_ look at ourselves would...be helpful."

Sam glances over at Peggy, whose head has tilted, expression gone thoughtful. "Whatcha thinking?"

"Well," she says, with a shrug. "I suppose it's worth a shot."

*

The museum is not busy, it being peak lunchtime hours when they arrive. The receptionist recognizes Steve and Peggy when they take off their sunglasses, but has the look of one who's seen them and other superheroes around before just by virtue of living in the same city, so her excitement stays contained as she lets them in. Peggy slips on her regular glasses, heart-shaped and red with polka dots, underneath the scarf she's tied over her hair while Steve pulls his ballcap low on his forehead. Sam hums the Pink Panther theme as they do so, earning him a swat upside the head courtesy of Peggy.

" _A symbol of the nation_ ," Sam reads aloud, as they approach the entrance to the Captain America exhibit, tucked away in an alcove off the first floor. " _A hero to the world. The story of Captain America is one of honor, bravery, and sacrifice_."

"Damn, they're really laying it on thick right from the start, aren't they?" Steve mutters, and Peggy slips her arms around one of his, squeezing herself to his side.

"Well, I wouldn't say they're _wrong_ ," Sam offers diplomatically, letting Steve look bashful before turning back to the welcome sign. " _Denied enlistment due to poor health, Steven Rogers was chosen for a project unique in the annals of American warfare, one that would transform him into the world's first super soldier..._ "

"That's...not accurate," Steve says, frowning.

"Isn't it?"

"Peggy got the serum before I did," Steve says, gesturing to his wife.

"Well, I wasn't a _soldier_ , they got that part right," Peggy says, her disdain for the loophole they had exploited obvious in her tone, nonetheless.

"They do have a section on you," Sam says, holding the brochure he had gotten from the receptionist up for their regard. "Maybe they...elaborate further, there."

Peggy makes a noise that doesn't sound too optimistic, compounding it by rolling her eyes. Her head turns as she does, so Sam and Steve don't see her face brighten. "Oh, look, darling." She tugs on Steve's arm, pointing to the wall leading into the exhibit proper. "The before and after."

Steve groans a little under his breath, and Sam steps around them to get a better look. On the wall are two official photos of Steve; the left helpfully labeled **PRE-SERUM** , and the right, **POST-SERUM**.

Sam laughs, pointing towards the left photo. "You know we hardly ever see pictures of you pre-serum? It's always that picture," he points to the right one, "that's in the history textbooks."

"That doesn't surprise me," Peggy says dryly.

"That picture helped a lot of teenage boys figure out they were queer, just so you know," Sam says. "Myself included."

"Well," Steve says, a hint of a blush rising on his face as he fights down the automatic sick feeling brought on by hearing the word "queer" used so casually. "Glad to be of service?"

Sam chuckles as he turns his attention to the smaller image displayed to the left of the pre-serum picture; instead of a photograph it appears to be documentation, bearing a military seal. "God damn..." he mutters after a moment.

"What is it?"

"Asthma, arrhythmia, high blood pressure, nervous trouble _of any sort_ , pernicious anemia..."

Steve steps a little closer, skimming the list and snorting when he's done. "That's not even all of it."

"What the hell was keeping you alive?"

"Spite," Peggy puts in before Steve can answer for himself.

"...She's not wrong," Steve concedes, and he starts to drift away from the pictures, Sam and Peggy following. "But, you know, we did have _medicine_ back then. And my mother was a nurse. So it wasn't like I was lying in a gutter somewhere waiting to..."

Steve stops in his tracks in the entryway to the main exhibition room. The wall opposite them is taken up by a giant mural of the Howling Commandos, fanned out in a receding triangle, Steve as the point in the foreground, Bucky to the left and slightly behind him. Mannequins bearing their uniforms stand on a platform below the mural, **HOWLING COMMANDOS** spelled out on block letters on the frontispiece.

"...waiting to die."

"All right, I have to ask," Sam says after a moment, his amusement carefully measured. "Who came up with the name?"

"I...oh Lord, I don't know," Steve stammers, looking away from the mural. "One of them. I wasn't actually there for it, they just...started calling us that, and I went along with it."

"I believe there was a contest to see who could come up with the least dignified name that Phillips would accept," Peggy says, her own recovery evident in her voice. "I also believe there was alcohol involved."

"They sound like they were a fun bunch."

"They were," Steve says, with a little laugh. "Never a dull...okay, that's a lie. There were plenty of dull moments. You know how it is." Sam nods. "There were just a lot less, with that team."

"They all still around?"

Steve shakes his head. "Gabe was the last holdout. He died just before...just before New York." They had managed to get in a handful of visits before his passing, which they counted as a small blessing; it was how they had met Antoine.

"I'm glad to hear he held out the longest," Sam says, a little bashfully. "He was kinda my idol, growing up."

"Oh, yeah?" Steve turns to face Sam, glad to hand the reins of conversation over.

"Hell yeah," Sam says, face bright with a hero worship that exceeded what he had suppressed in the face of meeting Steve. "He was the coolest out of all of you."

"Oh, that's how it is?"

"Don't dish it out if you can't take it," Sam returns smoothly, grinning. "No, but seriously, I got to meet him once. Sorta. My elementary school managed to snag him for, like, a Veteran's Day event or something, I forget what exactly. He came, did a speech, took a few pictures with all the different classes. It was the best day."

"So there's a picture of Little Sam with Gabe Jones floating about?" Peggy asks. "I'd like to see it."

"I'm sure I got it in a photo album somewhere." They've started walking again. "I'm not, like, next to him or anything in the picture, but I did get to shake his hand before he left. I was so ecstatic; I didn't wash my hands for a week afterwards."

Each Howling Commando has their own loosely-defined section in the exhibit, and Sam, naturally, steers them to Gabe's first. It's set up near the doorway to a side exhibition room, through which they can see a presentation on the SSR. A quick check of the map shows that the section on Peggy is in the side room, and after Sam's had his fill of Gabe they duck into it.

" _Margaret "Peggy" Carter with Dr. Abraham Erskine_ ," Sam reads aloud, from the caption beside a large photo of just that. " _Declassified information released in 2005 revealed that Agent Carter received an early version of the famed Erskine Serum. The documents revealed that her good rapport with Dr. Erskine, as well as her own failing health, prompted the groundbreaking biochemist to test the experimental drug, referred to as Erskine Beta, on his friend in a bid to save her life. Her miraculous return to vitality was the impetus needed for the Strategic Science Reserve to launch Project Rebirth, a step that would ultimately lead to the discovery of Steve Rogers and the birth of Captain America._ " 

"Even before we met, Peggy was changing my life," Steve says, briefly wrapping an arm around Peggy's waist and squeezing her to him.

Sam glances over at Peggy. "This all true?"

"Sounds accurate."

"What was wrong?" Sam's hand lingers over _failing health_.

"I had Wilson's disease." Peggy takes a moment to share a funny face with Sam. "That's where your system can't eliminate any excess copper, so it just keeps building up until it wrecks your liver, and/or your brain. And there _wasn't_ medicine for that, then; EB was my only hope and, thankfully, it worked. And then some."

"Did he know it'd do the "then some"? Dr. Erskine, I mean."

Peggy shrugs. "It's hard to tell _what_ he knew, honestly. He destroyed most of his papers, if he even wrote them in the first place. It drove Howard nuts."

"I'm still half-convinced that he was secretly Gandalf the Grey. You laugh," Steve says to Sam's chuckle, "but Thor exists."

"Fair enough," Sam concedes gamely, stepping around to view the rest of the booth dedicated to Peggy. "Aw, look at this, you two. _A Love Story for the Ages_."

_After their first meeting at Camp Lehigh, Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter's romance bloomed under mutual admiration and assistance, with Carter defying direct orders to aid Rogers in the daring rescue of over 400 prisoners of war, including Rogers' friend James "Bucky" Barnes, from a Hydra labor camp near Kreichsberg, Austria. Barnes himself would later tell his friend that Carter was "a woman you could spend the rest of your life with." It was a prophetic statement; after two years of providing tactical support to Captain America and the Howling Commandos, Carter joined Rogers in the infiltration of the Valkyrie, and crashed with him in the Arctic Circle, an event which would place them both in a cryogenic sleep for sixty-six years before their revival in 2011. The couple's working partnership found a new home in SHIELD's Avengers Initiative, of which they were founding members, and their romance finally culminated in a marriage in 2012._

Bucky had been so bitter the first time he'd said that, after Peggy had sauntered away from them at the bar, her hips swaying quite purposely in that red dress. A woman Steve could spend the rest of his life with, now that he probably wasn't going to drop dead sometime in his early 30s; it wouldn't even change Bucky's plans to die as a rich, eccentric old bachelor, provided the war didn't get him first. The ensuing several weeks had been a mess, as Steve did his best to maintain their relationship under the cover of a not-exactly-fake attraction to Peggy, Bucky became more and more withdrawn and reckless, and Peggy starting sussing things out.

Sharing Steve had been Peggy's idea. It was an arrangement to get them through the war, "and if we all survive, well, we'll figure it out then"; Bucky, ever selfless despite his jealousy and now growing quite despondent besides, agreed to it, and Steve signed on to appease them both, and for slightly less selfless reasons as well. That Peggy and Bucky would end up falling for each other in relatively short order had been unexpected, if unsurprising in retrospect, and amazing. "A woman you could spend the rest of your life with" became a general statement, spoken amid half-serious plans to disappear after the war was over, maybe heading up to Alaska Territory where it was least likely that anyone would bother them. _No one gets this lucky,_ Steve had thought several times.

Indeed they don't; not for very long, at least.

"Wanted to be part of the action?" Sam asks, a little carefully, as he runs a finger near the section detailing Peggy's boarding of the Valkyrie.

"I wanted revenge," Peggy says, soft and light as poison slipped into a drink. She had climbed up out of the car chasing the Valkyrie and scaled Steve like the side of a cliff, out for blood in a way he'd never seen from her before but that he fully appreciated nonetheless. Zola had been tucked away behind several security measures by that point, but it was open season on Schmidt as far as they were concerned.

Sam nods, slowly, letting any uncertainties he'd had about them, Bucky, and himself settle. The three of them are quiet for a moment, before they mutually, silently agree to drift off. There are booths dedicated to Phillips, to Erskine, and to the rest of the SSR team (Steve manages to lighten the mood a little by pointing out Lorraine in a group photo and prompting Peggy to tell the "fonduing" story; Sam finds it most entertaining) in this side room, and once they've finished there they meander back into the main hall, to explore the rest of the Commandos' tributes. It's ostensibly old news to Steve and Peggy, but reading again how DumDum (1901-1966) had directed SHIELD through all of Korea and the start of Vietnam; Gabe (1922-2012) had stuck with the organization until retirement while Morita (1913-2007) eventually quit to go into film production; Dernier (1905-1974) continued to hunt Nazis as a French spy; and Monty (1914-1981) retreated to his ancestral estate to raise a family in quiet obscurity, is somehow reassuring as much as it is unsettling. Their friends had lives before them; they deserved to have lives afterwards. It's the lives _without_ that's the gut punch.

Bucky's display is to the far right of the room. Above his booth is a flatscreen TV playing footage from the 40s on loop, and the change in lighting as it cuts between scenes stays in the corner of their eyes as they drift throughout the room. They exhaust the other displays, gathering up the strength in the meantime, before they finally trail over in that direction. As they get closer the video reveals itself to be of Steve saying something to make Bucky laugh, before cutting to them huddling over a map in the back of a truck, and then to them in a bar with the Commandos, Peggy included, raising their mismatched cups in a toast. Underneath the TV is a large glass etching, obviously traced from a photograph, of Bucky's face frowning, nearly glaring, into the distance.

"That's your man, huh?" Sam asks softly.

"Yeah," Steve rasps, before coughing. There's a pause, and then a laugh. "Look at this jerk, mugging for the camera like that. Thought it made him look cool. He was all about looks, this guy." He moves his hand as if to plaster it against the display, before some part of his brain realizes that security will yell at him for that, so his hand hangs in the air, just inches away from Bucky's face. "Couldn't drag him away from the mirror, sometimes. He was worse than Becky."

"Becky?"

"His little sister," Steve says, and his hand falls away, slipping back into his pocket. "They were all well-put-together people, the Barnes. Aunt Win...Bucky's mother, Winifred, she was big on appearances. Not, not in a shallow way, just...she always wanted her kids to look dignified. You know. Classy. She and my mother had that in common," he laughs. "I didn't really take it to heart, but Bucky...Bucky did. Not that I was complainin'. Oh no, my fella's easy on the eyes, quelle horreur."

"They got the dates wrong," Peggy says suddenly, her voice a little robotic as she stares, frowning, at the text accompanying the display. "Steve." She tugs, hard, on his sleeve. "They got the dates wrong _twice_." She points to the top of the paragraph, where it's stated that Bucky was born in 1916, and then at the bottom, where his lifespan is listed as **1917-1944**. "He's the same age as us. And it was...it was _'45_ , when he...the war was almost over. He was, he was he was going to be twenty-seven."

"Yeah, museums are kinda notorious for typos like this," Sam says quietly.

"Well they have to _fix it_ ," Peggy hisses, her face going dark pink.

"They got everyone else's information right," Steve says in a low voice, almost a growl. "The hell's wrong with them that they mess up his?"

"This is a _Smithsonian_ museum, of all places _this one_ should be able to get their facts straight."

"Yeah, I don't, I don't know who you would talk to about that," Sam says, a little sheepishly, glancing away.

"We'll look at the website when we get home," Steve says, his hand clamping around Peggy's waist. "There's gotta be a number we can call. Or a form or something we can submit."

"Here, let me see if I can..." Peggy swings her purse around and starts to dig through it for her phone. "Maybe on the mobile site, there's something..."

"You don't want to wait until you get back...?" Sam asks.

"He got shot off a train for me; they can at least get his damn birthday right!" Steve snaps, two steps down from yelling; someone nearby looks up, but thankfully doesn't see their faces and decides to mind their own business.

Sam puts his hands up, taking a step back. "Okay. Sorry."

The anger doesn't quite subside so much as get a scolding from the politer part of Steve's brain, and he has the decency to look regretful. "Sorry. Sorry, Sam. Just..."

"No, I understand," Sam says, and he does; he gestures to the display with his chin. "What else they get wrong? So you know what all to yell at them for."

Steve makes a noise halfway between a groan and a laugh, but he tilts his head back, to get a better look at the top of the display. "Well, the first sentence is wrong. We didn't meet on the playground. We didn't even go to the same school."

"Didn't you? That's in basically every biography ever..."

Steve shakes his head. "Buck and I became friends because I was looking for work cleaning houses and I just happened to knock on his door. But no one wanted to hear that Captain America's sidekick had more money than Captain America himself, so. That was the official line. Publicity: the great equalizer."

"This is true, he was very athletic," Peggy says, pointing to the line detailing as much. "I think you young people nowadays call it "parkour"? He did things like that. It was very funny, watching these two run up trees and back flip off of them, just for larks. He'd never run up too high, though; not of his own volition. He hated heights."

"And he _was_ smart. I think the only thing he ever had the smallest amount of trouble with was, like...languages, you know, picking up the local tongue of wherever we were stationed. But he had me and Gabe to help him out, so he caught on pretty quickly."

"He _was_ very good with his tongue," Peggy giggle-mutters with a small smile; Sam covers his face a little too late to blockade a snort (a passerby absently mutters "Bless you") as Steve's face turns an interesting shade of red. "Um...everything else looks right," she continues nonchalantly, scanning the paragraph. "Enlisted...captured..." She presses her lips together as _isolation, deprivation, and torture_ come back into her field of view. Bucky had refused to acknowledge what he underwent in Kreichsberg beyond a rabid devotion to using condoms, even after they definitively established the facts of their exclusive relationship and Peggy's inability to conceive; to give voice to it now, in front of a stranger, seems especially, heartbreakingly callous. "Strong will, definitely. You had to have, to keep up with us." The corner of her mouth twitches up into a smile. "And yes. He was a _phenomenal_ marksman. He saved our collective arse a number of times."

Sam nods. "Okay. So that's a _B+, could try harder_ for the Smithsonian." Steve and Peggy laugh softly, and Sam steals a glance at the group that's starting to crowd in behind them. "Here, we should..." He gestures for them to step away from the exhibit, which they seem both relieved and reluctant to do.

The rest of the exhibition is full of various wartime detritus and footage; in a small amphitheater that requires a special ticket they're playing the movies Steve performed in before the USO headed to Europe (Steve steers them away from the theatre while Sam announces his plan to come back later). They pass through the gift shop without looking too hard at the merchandise and find their way back into the museum's permanent collection; a shared "might as well" attitude takes them through the first, second, and third floors of the Air and Space Museum, all the way up to the observation deck. Peggy decides to have a seat on a bench in the middle of the deck, pulling out her phone and a sandwich she had hidden in her purse; without checking her companions can tell that she's looking into how to contact the museum, and they take themselves over to the railing so as to not distract her.

"So," Sam says, after they spend a moment admiring the view of the river and city afforded by the deck. "Was this a...good experience, for you guys?" Steve makes an ambiguous noise. "Such illuminating commentary." Steve snorts. "How you feelin'? Still think this was a good idea?"

Steve flounders for a bit, shifting his weight between his feet and studying his hands and the view before he speaks. "I dunno. I know I said viewing it objectively might help, but it's...it's just too strange."

"How so?"

"Seeing it all just...laid out like that. We went here. We did this. Then this happened. It's..." He thinks for a moment, and then snorts. "It's weird to think of your life as a, a bunch of facts that people get taught, you know?" Sam nods, encouraging. "And it's...the facts that get taught aren't...they're not the ones that were important. Not to you, personally, at least."

"What facts were important to you?" Sam says, resolving that this is as far into his counselor headspace as he's gonna go.

"Like...like, like take Peggy being sick, and getting the EB. Down there, that's just...an interesting piece of trivia, you know? There's never gonna be anything on how...how terrified she was that it wasn't gonna work. Down there, it's just a thing that happened." Sam hums an _mmhmm_. "And Bucky...I mean, the world cares that he was an excellent shot, and I did, too, but when _I_ remember him I think about..." God, what doesn't he think about. "I think about how he was a great cook, and how...how _kind_ he was; he was _so_ kind, and..." He trails off, and then ducks his head, running his hands from the nape of his neck to the hairline on his forehead. "I don't really hold it against anyone. I mean, _I_ didn't think about any of those things when I was studying, y'know, George Washington or whoever."

"But George Washington wasn't standing there reading about his life right over your shoulder." Steve nods. "I think I understand. I mean, I know it's gotta be rough, bein' _actual_ living history. And maybe tryin' to..." he hesitates for a second, before deciding to risk it, "...figure out how much of you is living, and how much of you is history?"

Steve pauses, and tries to laugh. "Not to put too fine a point on it or anything..."

"Sorry, that's kinda my gig." Steve laughs for real this time, and Peggy looks up, smiling to hear him. "Well. Best advice I can give you guys, not that I've ever come across anyone in a situation quite like yours, is. Don't. Well, _try not_ to drive yourself crazy deciding what's "now" and what's over. You'll cut yourself off from a lot that way. I remember reading this somewhere, that things...things you lose might find a way to come back to you, but things you throw away never will." Steve nods, slowly. "So don't force yourself to close any doors, okay? From either direction, past or present. You guys'll find what you need from both ends, I promise you."

"Thanks," Steve says quietly.

"And I do really, really recommend you guys keep coming to the VA, and maybe hook yourselves up with a private counselor, if you need more help. Just not me. It's a bad, bad idea to counsel your friends. I'm kinda pushing it now, as it is."

"Friends?"

Sam takes a moment to parse the tone, and then offers an apologetic smile. "Yeah," he drawls slowly. "Absolutely no offense to you and Peggy. You're lovely people, you're a lot of fun, and you're _very_ attractive, believe me. But...I get the feeling you're not really what I'm looking for, in the...well, in the sex and romance department. And I don't think I'm what you're looking for, either."

Steve wants to say that what he's looking for won't ever come back; even opens his mouth to voice it, but he not ready to throw Bucky away, not just yet.

"Fair enough," he says instead.

Sam settles his elbows against the railing and is about to change the topic when the sound of police sirens floats in from a distance. Steve straightens immediately; from her seat Peggy lifts her head.

"Man, you two really are on call 24/7, huh?" Sam says.

"Always on high alert," Steve laughs. 

"You wanna go check it out? I mean, I'll head home..." They had taken separate cars.

"Well," Steve says, his reluctance obvious, "it's technically not our business until we get a mes--"

There's a loud beeping noise in his pocket, synchronized with a buzzing from Peggy's hand. Sam raises an eyebrow as Steve fumbles with his jacket zipper.

"Darling?" Peggy calls, just as Steve draws his phone out of his pocket.

 **She Who Must Be Obeyed:**  
NATIONS MOSQUE NOW

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys slightly OT but still topical because of the family history I write for Steve: [they're planning to build a conference center over the Old Jewish Cemetery in Vilnius and that's a phenomenally shitty thing to do; this is the petition for them to knock it the hell off; if you could sign it that'd be aces](https://www.change.org/p/hon-dalia-grybauskaite-please-move-new-vilnius-convention-center-project-away-from-the-old-jewish-cemetery).


	3. I'll Be Lost Without You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TW for gun violence, discussion of anti-Semitism, terrorism, Islamophobia (both played straight and used as emotional manipulation), references to several wars and assassinations in the 20th century as well as the Holocaust; emotional and physical abuse**. Given the recent shooting in Quebec, I'm going to specifically warn for **a staged terror attack and shooting at a mosque**
> 
> Since I don't have to fill 136 minutes and you're all familiar with the movie besides, I've severely condensed the plot and made a few noticeable changes. Mainly because I really do not care for action sequences and want to avoid as many of them as possible :P
> 
> Nations Mosque (aka Mosque for All Nations) is based on The Nation's Mosque (aka Masjid Muhammad), but it's not supposed to be located in the same place or have the same architecture.

Natasha doesn't have many memories about her childhood that she can trust, but she does remember that Fridays were special.

When Clint first brought her into SHIELD custody, and it was decided that she would be hidden at the farmhouse while her body and mind knitted themselves back together after a hospital collapsed on top of her and the baby she'd been holding, those Fridays when Laura would prepare a special dinner and light candles were a comfort to her, even as she found herself looking anxiously at the uncovered windows (once her broken legs were healed enough for her to walk again, she took it upon herself to shield them from whatever prying eyes might be in Bumfuck, Illinois; it took awhile for Laura to coax her into leaving the curtains open, and longer for her to relax, somewhat, about it). There was something... _incomplete_ , however, about those Fridays, but she couldn't put her finger on it until Nick Fury took her aside and presented her with documentation recovered from the then-most recent Red Room bust. After she flipped quietly through the files for a long time, Nick pointed her to the Mosque for All Nations; safer, because it was not his own sporadically-attended house of worship, but reputedly very welcoming nonetheless. 

Natasha's job, like Fury's, doesn't afford her many free Friday afternoons in DC, but when it does, a little before 1300 finds her following the adhan to the women's section, already wearing a plain black niqab, identical to so many others, that gives her a comfortable sense of anonymity, and a matching abaya that gives her a cover for the weapons she retains on her person at all times in the event of an emergency.

Such as now.

Natasha pulls a screaming woman and child to her, curling herself over them as cover and dragging them into the hallway, away from the hail of bullets firing in either direction above their heads. She shoves them behind her and crouches beside them, pulling out her phone to send a message for help to Steve and Peggy, and then replaces the phone in her hand with a gun. The child screams at the sight of it, but it's drowned out by the shouts of more women and children streaming into the hallway, and Natasha hugs the wall and pushes past the crush of bodies back into the women's musallah.

The room is filling with smoke--someone's set a fire--and this forces Natasha to hang back. She hears the sound of someone approaching, gunshots growing louder as he does so, and she aims a bullet where logic tells her his hip would be; the agonized cry and the sound of a gun clattering to the floor tell her that her aim was true, but the fact has barely sunk in before a loud crash sends her leaping away, back towards where she came. She recovers her bearings in time to shoot in the gut another gunman rounding the corner into the hallway, and as she picks her way over his body she sees what had caused the noise; a police car, flipped upside-down, its wheels still spinning, is half-inside the mosque, letting the smoke escape into the outside.

A man running to the car from inside gets a bullet in the neck. The car fire is filling up the hole in the wall, blocking Natasha from using it as an escape route, and the noise of gunshot has gone from manual to fully automatic, so thunderous and echoing that she can't tell from which direction it's coming, if it's only from one direction at all. Natasha steps backward, waiting to see if anyone else is going to run in from the musallah; when no one comes after ten seconds, she yanks her niqab off her head, peels off her abaya, and dashes towards the actual exit from the building in the footsteps of the other women, the clothes bundled under her left arm.

The doorway leading outside is blockaded by a huddled mass of terrified civilians, and Natasha has to shove her way through the crowd, pushing them back as she does so. She makes it onto the street to see the nondescript black SUV she knows is Nick's peeling out, the police cars around it already littered with bullet holes that grow in number as Nick fires a machine gun from the windows. Natasha takes off down the stairs leading to the sidewalk, picking off most of the men firing at Nick's car before turning and sprinting down the increasingly clearing streets, away from the mosque. The two men who immediately follow her on foot end up plastered on the concrete, faces rendered unrecognizable by lead.

A few precious seconds are bought when the remaining gunmen have to take to their cars to give chase, and Natasha turns into an alleyway as soon as she can. She just makes it over a chain link fence separating the end of the alleyway from a small apartment complex's park, and ducks behind one of the buildings, when the police sirens wail past her and fade as they neglect to stop. She looks left and right, to see if anyone else has followed her on foot, and then rips her phone out of its holster on her belt, pressing the right buttons to call Steve.

He picks up immediately, and before he can finish demanding what the hell is going on she spits out "Follow Fury's car; it's heading north on Seventeenth Street. Can't miss it; it's the one being chased by fake cops." She hangs up just as she hears the squeal of tires as Peggy abruptly changes directions, and then doubles back, running back onto the street through another alleyway.

Steve is rubbing off on her. As she steals a car at gunpoint she promises the terrified owner that she'll return it.

*

Peggy and Steve were two blocks parallel to 17th when Natasha called, and as Peggy turned to head east Steve was already climbing out of the passenger side window onto the roof. He dimly hears Peggy bark something at the car's computer; the AI is louder when it confirms that DC Metro Police are behind them, and Steve crouches, his shield held in front of him. Peggy swerves around two civilian vehicles, stopped abruptly at the sound of machine gun fire, and accelerates, plowing into the right rear side of the nearest mercenary car and forcing it to spin out. Peggy turns in her seat, leaning from her window and shooting the nearest mercenary through his windshield; Steve yells from the roof and she turns back, jerking the car out of the way of another emergency-parked civilian.

Ahead of them Fury has wedged himself between traffic and a barrier, forcing several cars out of his way; slowing him and his assailants down. One man at the head of the pack has the same idea as Steve, but once he climbs onto the roof of his car his spine is unexpectedly met with Steve's shield; he falls, and Steve catches the shield as it ricochets back into his hands. Peggy swings around the other side of traffic and pulls ahead; bullets fly as the mercenaries switch their target from Fury to Steve, only to fall to the pavement after bouncing off the shield.

Ahead of them Fury's car suddenly accelerates, flying through an intersection the split second before a Penske truck plows into the mercenary car immediately tailing him. Peggy swerves left, cutting off the middle and final mercenary car, and takes out the driver with another bullet to the face; the passenger feels the roof and windshield of the car cave in on him under the spinning edge of Steve's shield. 

Steve jumps off the roof of his car to the hood of the mercenary's, wrenching his shield free, and climbs into the back seat of his own car. Peggy jerks forward into a bus stop, running over a shooter on foot, and spins around, straightening out and accelerating through the intersection between the traffic light and the stopped, half-destroyed Penske truck.

There's the sound of an explosion, and a geyser of black smoke, to their right; Peggy makes a sharp turn, and then another, onto 16th. She makes it two blocks before she has to slam on the brakes; Fury's car is flipped onto its back, the underside smoking, approached by four more mercenaries.

Peggy leans out her window and shoots, killing one and drawing the attention of the others; they're distracted as Steve ducks out of the backseat and throws the shield, cracking the skull of the first one it hits and the face of the second one, after it ricochets off the first. Peggy switches her lead foot to the gas pedal and ducks; the final gunman misses a few shots, and underestimates the amount of time he has before he gets run over.

Steve slides the shield onto his arm as approaches Fury's car carefully; Peggy turns and coasts back, as well. When the feared ambush doesn't come, Steve drops into a crouch, grabs the bottom of the drivers' side window, and pulls the car up slowly. Peggy puts the car in park and hops out, going to and kneeling down next to Steve.

"You're not dead yet, are you?"

"Walked off more than this," Fury grinds out, peering up into her face. He wriggles his legs loose as Steve slowly frees them, inching his way out; Peggy offers her arms for him to grab, helping him crawl forward. Fury swears under his breath, but he doesn't pass out or drop dead, so nothing vital seems to have been broken; all the same Peggy helps him sit against the car once Steve lowers it to the ground again, rather than allowing him to stand up.

"All right then, do you mind explaining what the _hell_ is--"

Peggy is cut off with a scream as a bullet tears through her arm and strikes Fury in the chest. Steve drops, covering them with the shield in time to deflect the next two bullets. When a fourth shot doesn't come he jerks his head up; from the shadow of a nearby building's fire escape he sees a flash of metal as it briefly touches sunlight, but before he can chase after it the wail of sirens snatches his attention, and he presses the shield tighter against his wife and boss; grabbing Peggy's gun from her belt and aiming it at the encroaching vehicles.

It's Sharon who comes out of a car first, her own gun drawn, and Steve yells "Sniper!" while pointing in the direction the shots had come from. Sharon whirls, aiming at the shadows; a group of more heavily armed men following Sharon head off in that direction. Sharon keeps her gun up as she approaches them, only lowering it when no attack comes; Steve is reticent to lift the shield fully regardless, but he does angle it so Sharon can see the damage.

Sharon acts quickly, though her face does go white as she turns and yells "I need EMTs over here!" Peggy's face is about as pale, one hand clamped tightly around her upper arm, over the wound, as her body works desperately to stop the blood from pouring out of her severed brachial artery. Below her Fury is slumped against the car, as still as death. "Here, lift your arm, Aunt Peggy, lie down..."

Sharon coaxes her great-aunt through stretching out on the pavement and raising her arm in the air, to let gravity assist in healing. She glances up at Fury as she does so, but the way her teeth clamp around her lower lip allows Steve to register, dimly, that he's a lost cause. The ambulance takes almost a minute to get to them, as it has to go around the SHIELD and police, genuine this time, cavalcade; by the time they do Sharon and Steve have switched places, with Steve's hand wrapped around Peggy's to help stem the blood flow, and Sharon crouching by Fury's body, making a token attempt at feeling for a pulse.

There's noise around them, then; the group that had gone to investigate the sniper coming back saying "All clear; no trace of anyone"; the EMTs asking Peggy and Steve questions about her medical history that Sharon tries to answer for them as they wrap Peggy's arm; other responders grimacing and muttering quietly at Fury's body as they load him onto a stretcher. It's Peggy who stays stoically quiet, and though Steve knows, logically, that while Erskine Beta is not as powerful as his version it's more than enough to let Peggy get through an injury like this, his hands start shaking as soon as he lets go of her arm.

They're balled into fists by the time Peggy's loaded into an ambulance, and he's surprised that one of them doesn't deck Rumlow in the face when he says, "Cap, you gotta come back to HQ."

Instead he whirls on him, face ruddy, and barks, "Are you _fucking_ kidding me? You do realize that my wife was just shot, right?"

Rumlow puts up his hands and take a step back. "I'm sorry, big guy. I'm just the messenger."

"For who?"

"Secretary Pierce." Rumlow gestures to the comm on his wrist. "I briefed him on what happened to..." He grimaces. "To Fury. He wants to talk to you about your involvement."

"Tell him I'm _indisposed_ ," Steve grinds out.

"I'll stay with Aunt Peggy." Sharon is at Steve's elbow, her features back to normal if her voice is still a little harried. "Uncle Steve. I'll stay with her, so you can...you can check in with Pierce."

"Sharon--"

"I know," she cuts him off. "I know it's... _fantastically_ shitty, but Director Fury..."

"It's not like I know anything," Steve says, and he knows he's being petulant but Peggy's blood is already drying on his palm. 

"Darling, it's all right," Peggy calls, over the bustle of EMTs strapping her in properly. "Go."

"Peg, are you sure?" Steve leans as far as he can into the back of the ambulance, folding his leg so he rests his knee on the floor.

" _Yes_ ," she says, and she at least looks pretty confident about that. "I'll be fine; we both know I'll be fine. No point in pissing off the Secretary. I'll probably be ready to go home by the time you get to me." Steve frowns. "I'm a big girl, darling. I tie my own shoelaces and everything. I can get through an in-and-out exam by myself. Or with Sharon, as the case may be."

His frown deepens, and gets punctuated by his teeth to his bottom lip, but he visibly concedes when he shrinks back. "All right. If you're sure."

"Sure and certain, darling." Her smile is bright, if a little pained. "I'll see you soon, all right? Love you."

"I love you too, Peg," he returns, with a similar expression. The EMTs take Peggy's attention then; Steve turns back to Sharon with "Don't leave her side, okay? And contact me if anything happens." She nods, and Steve turns back to Rumlow, fixing him with his fiercest _I'm not happy about this_ glare. "All right. Let's get this bullshit over with."

*

Of course Pierce would make him wait.

There's a television in the room where he's been left, and when Steve picks up the remote he resists the urge to throw it into the screen, instead using it for its intended purpose. The news is helpfully filling him in on what he and Peggy had missed: a possible terrorist attack at the Mosque for All Nations; whether it was an attack perpetrated by or against the mosque is still up in the air; at least twenty dead and dozens wounded; all of the affected area on police lockdown; Captain America and Agent Carter spotted on a high-speed chase with alleged terrorists; Agent Carter wounded and SHIELD Director Nick Fury possibly deceased...

He watches it on loop, hoping each time for something new and illuminating, but it's only the same information, the same civilian-submitted cell phone videos, over and over, but with increasingly vitriolic commentary from pundits. Steve is seriously reconsidering the remote's use as a projectile about the twentieth time he hears "jihadist", and luckily Pierce arrives before he comes to an alternate conclusion than his previous.

"Captain." Steve stands as Pierce gestures for him to enter his office. "I apologize for the delay; I know you probably want to be with Agent Carter..."

"No apology necessary," Steve replies, only halfway invested in sounding sincere, as he follows direction. A line of green lights up the doorway as Steve passes underneath it; Steve glances at it and then Pierce for explanation, and his concern is waved away.

"I was in an emergency meeting with the World Security Council," Pierce goes on to explain, as he shuts the door behind him. "Understandably they're a bit shaken by the reports of what happened today. As am I." Steve takes a seat on the small couch opposite Pierce's desk, pulling his shield off his back and resting it against his legs as he does so. "It hasn't been publicly announced yet," Pierce continues as he seats him next to Steve, a few inches away, "but I got the news from an agent at the hospital. Nick...Director Fury...was killed in that attack. He was pronounced dead on arrival."

Steve nods, slowly. He hadn't expected to hear any differently, and aside from the numbness it's almost a relief to have confirmation, as if seeing him shot wasn't confirmation enough. "I'm sorry. For your loss." It was well-known around SHIELD that Pierce had not only initially hired Fury, but had been behind his promotion to director; a few of the near-retirees with nothing to lose occasionally referred to their director as "Pierce's pet" in amused whispers.

"I appreciate that." Pierce offers a weak smile, and then allows a pause to school his expression into something suitably urgent. "Captain, how did you and Agent Carter come to be involved in this...incident? I was under the impression that you both weren't on-duty today."

"We weren't. We got a message from Agent Romanoff telling us to come to the Nations Mosque."

Pierce frowns. "Did her message say anything else?"

"No. Just to get to that mosque right then. She called about ten minutes later, to tell us to follow Fury's car; that it was being chased." Pierce's frown deepens. "Is there a problem?"

"Hmm." Pierce purses his lips. "Captain, you were on the Lemurian Star when it was re-taken by SHIELD. Were you ever informed as to who ordered it to be taken in the first place?" Steve shakes his head, still slowly. "Batroc was hired anonymously. He was contacted by email and paid by wire transfer. The money was run through seventeen accounts, all of them fictitious. The last one belonged to a gentleman by the name of Jacob Veech. This gentleman died six years ago, but his last address was 1435 Elmhurst Drive. And before her death, Nick's mother lived at 1437."

Steve's brow furrows. "You're saying Fury hired the pirates? Why would he do that?"

"Well, the Council's theory is that the hijacking was a cover for the sale of classified information to radical Islamic terrorists. Either the sale went south, or they wanted to make sure Nick kept his mouth shut, and thus this...incident at the mosque." Steve stares at him, and Pierce sighs. "I don't want to believe it, either. But there's a lot of...circumstantial evidence supporting the theory. Batroc himself was radicalized even before the DGSE laid him off. And Nick...well, there is the possibility that, with his background, he might have felt...sympathy."

Steve wants to protest, wants to ask what Pierce means by that, but a niggling feeling in his gut tells him to stay quiet and pretend he knows what Pierce is talking about. Instead he purses his lips, and bobs his head. "I see."

"Have you had any other contact with Agent Romanoff?"

"Not since she left the Lemurian Star. Why?"

"She was obviously involved somehow in today's attack. _How_ exactly she was involved, we don't know. What we _do_ know is that Agent Romanoff's mission on the Lemurian Star was to gather intelligence from the ship. The apparatus she used, the flash drive, is missing. It wasn't with Nick's body, or in his car as far as we can tell. So there is a chance it might be in Agent Romanoff's possession. Now, that flash drive could be the key to exonerating Nick. Or indicting him. Herself, as well. We won't know until we find it, and we haven't been able to locate Agent Romanoff. I've got a team on it already, but if she reaches out to you again, or if you see her, I want you to bring her in immediately. Subdue her if you have to."

"Sir?"

Pierce fixes him with a sympathetic look. "I realize this is a difficult order for you to receive, given your... _history_ with Romanoff, on the STRIKE Team and with the Avengers. But she _has_ been a spy for nearly her entire life, and not always for the good guys. Nor is she herself immune from radicalization." Steve raises his eyebrows. "You didn't know she was Muslim, Captain?"

"No, I didn't." This is an honest statement, but it also seems wise to admit ignorance after having already pretended knowledge.

"Well, now you do. And for all you know, Captain, she might have called you and Agent Carter to the scene in the hopes that you would be killed in the scuffle. This is the nature of our business. Friends could become foes any day. We have to respond accordingly."

Steve inhales deeply, and then nods. "I understand, sir."

Pierce gives him a grim smile. "Good." He rises, and gestures for Steve to do so as well. "I'll let you go now, Captain. I've kept you from the missus long enough, I feel."

"Thank you." Steve draws his shield up into his arms and hooks it onto the holster on his back. "Will you be be wanting to speak to Agent Carter after she's discharged?"

"Perhaps. I'm sure an agent is taking her testimony as we speak, if they haven't already. I'll be in touch."

Steve nods, holding down the sudden spike of nerves in his stomach. "Yes, sir."

*

He's prepared to be stopped on his way out of HQ. He even pulls his shield off of his back and holds it, in the case of a sudden ambush. But his compliance must have satisfied Pierce, because he makes it out of the building and all the way to the parking garage of George Washington University Hospital without an issue. It's after he steps out of the taxi, the shield in hand nonetheless, that he's finally confronted, by a woman covered head-to-toe, quite literally, in black.

"Come with me if you want to live," the woman says, and Steve tenses up upon recognition of the voice.

"I'm supposed to bring you in when I see you, so you know."

"I don't think you wanna do that," Natasha replies.

"And why is that?"

"Because somebody at SHIELD ordered that hit on Fury. And they tried to kill me, too."

"Why should I trust you?"

Natasha hikes up her abaya in an uncharacteristically clumsy movement as if to assure Steve that she's not drawing a weapon; Steve is nonetheless prepared for one when she pulls out a flash drive and holds it to him. "Yours. If you want it."

Steve's gaze jumps back and forth between the flash drive and her eyes, peering out unreadably from her niqab, and then reaches out with his free hand, snatching it out of hers. "You had it this entire time."

"No."

"Who had it before you, then?"

"Sharon."

"...What?"

The noise of someone's car unlocking fills up the garage, and Natasha glances around as she hears the crunch of concrete under tires. "It would be much wiser to explain where people can't hear. Come on."

"I'm not going anywhere with you until--"

"If you don't trust me, trust your wife."

"What do you..." The car they had heard rolls to a stop behind Natasha, its tinted driver's side window rolling down to reveal the upper half of Peggy's face.

"You're not driving with that arm," Natasha says, pulling the door open. "Let it rest up. Go sit with your husband in the back."

"Peggy?" Steve asks, as Peggy glares at Natasha but nonetheless begins to unbuckle her seatbelt.

"We'll explain on the way, darling," Peggy says, sliding out of the driver's seat and opening up the backseat door. "Come on. No time to waste."

Steve glances at Natasha, who is busy climbing into the driver's seat, and then back at Peggy, who is looking at him earnestly, impatiently. He flexes his fingers against the handles on his shield, grits his teeth, and climbs into the car. Peggy slides in after him and shuts the door behind her. He notices that Peggy's wounded arm is heavily bandaged but shows no sign of blood leaking through, so he doesn't feel too guilty when instead of an inquiry about her welfare, the first thing out of his mouth is "You two mind explaining to me what the hell is going on? Why did Sharon have the flash drive? Where _is_ Sharon?"

"She went to get Michael," Peggy says, her voice suddenly a little thick. "She's moving him somewhere safe."

"If they figure out that you're with me they'll probably go after him for leverage," Natasha confirms, reaching up and pulling her niqab off of her head. "Best to tie up any loose ends."

"Who's "they"?" Steve demands.

"I don't know who _exactly_ ," Natasha says, turning out of the parking garage. "But it has to be someone at SHIELD."

"And what makes you say that?"

"The Triskelion is the most secure building in the world. If anyone could hack Fury's office, it'd have to be someone on the inside."

"If anyone...do you mind backing the hell up and actually explaining from the beginning, Natasha?"

"Look, Fury wasn't an idiot," Natasha snaps, almost defensively; from his view of her face through the rearview mirror Steve thinks he can see her eyes water briefly. "He knew how dangerous Project Insight is. He knew someone could take the chance to try to sabotage it. So he...hired pirates, to hijack the Lemurian Star. And then he sent me to get the ship intel. To make sure things were going as they should be."

"I suppose getting us to kill off a couple pirates was an added bonus," Steve mutters.

Natasha huffs, and elects to not quibble with Steve on that. "But Fury couldn't open the flash drive in his office. Someone blocked him using his own credentials. But that's why he let you two in on Project Insight. He wanted you to know about it, in case something was going on. And it's why he was near the mosque. There are...safehouses...that run the software that can decrypt SHIELD info, but aren't connected to the main computer system. Our plan was to meet after prayer and hit up one of those safehouses."

"And where does Sharon come into all this?"

"That was Fury hedging his bets. He contacted me through the communications system. If someone was listening in, he wanted to try to draw them out. But he talked to Sharon in person, and gave her the flash drive just in case he or I didn't make it out. We didn't think they'd..." Her knuckles turn white as they grip the steering wheel. "We figured someone used his credentials to spook him into making himself vulnerable. We knew an assassination attempt was likely. We didn't think they'd _stage a terrorist attack_."

"Sharon explained everything to me at the hospital, after the other agents left," Peggy says, reaching across her lap with her good hand to squeeze Steve's wrist. "The stories match. I think we can trust her."

"About _this_ , at least," Natasha says, earning herself a snort courtesy of Steve.

"Who at SHIELD do you think could be behind this?" Steve asks, keeping his voice a little guarded so she knows he hasn't let her totally off the hook yet.

"Tch. Could be anyone. Could be a _lot_ of anyones, though I'm gonna bet at least Sitwell is in on it, since he was on the ship. But it could go all the way up to the WSC for all we know. That's why we need to open this flash drive. We need to figure out what the hell's happening before we can stop it."

"If they knew you and Fury were meeting, they might be wise to the fact that you were headed to a safehouse."

"They probably are. That's why we're not going to that safehouse."

"They'll go to all of them--"

"They'll go to the ones they _know about_." They can't see it, but Natasha gives a grim little smile in response to their momentarily stunned looks. "I always make sure there are one or two things about me that no one knows until it's absolutely necessary."

"I suppose that's smart," Peggy concedes.

"Lonely way to live, though," Steve observes, pointedly.

"Good way not to die," Natasha counters, her tone betraying a little wistfulness despite the readiness of her answer. Steve and Peggy exchange a glance.

"Y'know, it's kinda hard to trust someone when you don't know who they are," Steve tries again.

"Fair enough." Natasha glances back at them through the rearview mirror. "Who do you want me to be?"

"Well I don't know. A friend would be nice."

"A friend, huh? I guess I can do that." She waggles her eyebrows as she asks, earning herself a little laugh.

" _Only_ a friend."

"Fine," Natasha says, rolling her eyes. "I'm already someone's third, anyway. Can't be yours, too."

"Oh?" Peggy asks, raising an eyebrow. "Care to give us any details, Natasha?"

"I thought you and Clint were a thing," Steve says, allowing himself a little levity. "No, you and Clint are _definitely_ a thing, don't lie to me. What, do you guys have a girlfriend? A boyfriend?"

"I'm sorry, you must be at least a Level _Five_ friend to unlock my romantic stats." There's a pause. "Please tell me you understand what I mean by--"

"Yeah, yeah, we got it," Steve says, waving his hand dismissively; but he smiles to show he appreciates what little candidness she felt comfortable providing. "Video games. We're 95, Nat; we're not dead."

"Okay, _touchy_. Speaking of," she says, before Steve can retort. "The thing with Sam. Is it going anywhere?"

Steve glances at Peggy; in all the confusion he hasn't gotten a chance to tell her. "No...he, we were on a "date" before you contacted us and, uh...he turned us down, actually. Doesn't think it's going to work out."

"Aww, that's too bad. You guys could use a partner who's actually that smart."

Peggy kicks the back of Natasha's seat.

*

Natasha's safehouse is two or so hours away, in Shenandoah National Park, and getting there requires them to leave the car and continue on foot. It's situated in what must have been, at one point, a clearing, because the underbrush around it is not grown up too high, and the building appears to have been a public restroom for campers in its previous life.

"Best place to put a safehouse is where no one wants to go, ever," Natasha says by way of explanation, pressing her thumb against the screws on the metal plate that once housed a now-missing door handle. There's a clicking sound as the screws accept her thumbprints and the lock undoes itself, and she holds the door open for her companions. "Age before beauty."

Peggy thumps her on the head on her way in; Natasha smiles broadly and makes sure to flick up the light switch the second before the door shuts behind her. As the florescents flicker into life, revealing a plain but remarkably clean, compared to its vine-covered exterior, room, Natasha goes to what had once been a diaper changing table, now a shelf housing a computer, and pops the flash drive into the port there. The computer responds to the sudden input of information, whirring into life, and inquires "Initiate system?"

Natasha hums the opening notes of the Super Mario theme as she presses seven keys to the same tune. The computer makes more whirring noises, and the small webcam at the top of the screen blinks blue while the screen itself begins to morph green light into something resembling a human face.

"Rogers, Steven Grant; born 1918," a thick accent announces, as the face takes enough shape to have a distinguishable mouth. "Carter, Margaret Elizabeth Alexandra; same. Romanova, Nataliya Alianovna, born 1984."

"It's...some kind of recording," Natasha tries to reason, her expression as shocked as her companions'.

"I am not a recording, Fräulein," the face says, sounding thoroughly affronted. "I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but he and Agent Carter ought to recognize me..."

Natasha turns to inquire further of Steve and Peggy, but the rage, ruddy and trembling, emanating off their bodies brings her up short.

"Zola," Steve growls, his jaw as clenched as his fists. "German scientist who worked for Johann Schmidt."

"Bastard's been dead for years," Peggy snarls. 

"First correction, I am _Swiss_ ," Zola cuts in smoothly. "Second, use your eyes. I have never been more alive." The green lights of the binary code surrounding Zola's face flash brightly. "In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however; that was worth saving. My consciousness has been downloaded onto multiple SHIELD devices over the past forty-two years, the most recent being when you plugged that flash drive into this computer."

"Why are you on SHIELD devices?" Steve demands. "Why are you anywhere _near_ SHIELD intel?"

"Operation Paperclip," Natasha says suddenly, and Steve and Peggy round on her for an explanation. "After the war, SHIELD recruited German scientists with...strategic value."

"They thought I could help their cause," Zola confirms. "But I also helped my own."

"Your cause went down with the Valkyrie," Peggy snaps. "Hydra doesn't exist anymore."

"Cut off one head," Zola's face disappears, "two more shall take its place." A double image of the Hydra skull appears in his stead.

"You're full of shit," Steve throws at him, suddenly feeling very much like an asthmatic eight-year-old daring a bully to hit him again.

"On the contrary," Zola says lightly, his face reappearing. "You see, Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity cannot be trusted with freedom. What we didn't truly appreciate back then, was that if you try to take that freedom by force, you may not be able to overcome the resistance. That was a very wise lesson you taught us, Captain, you and your friends. I thank you for it."

" _Go to hell_ ," Peggy spits.

"Far wiser to create a humanity who would simply...hand you their freedom," Zola continues, as if Peggy hadn't spoken. "So, once SHIELD was founded, and I was recruited, I made sure to plant the seed, and surely enough, the new Hydra bloomed within your little organization. And thanks to a superpower's reach, we have set down roots _everywhere_." His face disappears again as his voice seems to amplify. "Russia. China. Palestine, Israel, Egypt. Korea. Sudan. Cuba. Argentina. Vietnam. Cambodia. Afghanistan. Iran, Iraq. Rwanda. Sokovia..." Footage and images accompany each word; mangled bodies, shattered cities, murdered children and soulless adults, fire and smoke and blood. "Anywhere you can think of, we are there. For seventy years Hydra has been sowing global crisis, reaping existential fear. And when history did not cooperate..." Squares fill up the screen, each filled with an image of King, Kennedy, Gandhi, Rabin, Hammerskjold, Lambrakis, Romero, Biko... "history was changed." A red X paints itself across each of their faces.

"That's impossible," Natasha says, her voice and hands shaking. "SHIELD would have stopped you."

"Mm. Accidents do happen."

The newspaper article announcing **HOWARD AND MARIA STARK KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENT** flashes on screen. Peggy's gasp rips through the air as her hand flies to her mouth.

"Hydra has created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, Hydra's new world order will arise." Zola's voice changes, taking on the gleeful tone of a giddy child. "I am very sorry to tell you this, Captain, Agent, but you both died for nothing."

As badly as Peggy wants to help him do it, she catches Steve's arm before he can plow his fist into the monitor. "What else is on this drive aside from you? Why does everyone want it?"

"Project Insight requires...well, insight. So, I wrote an algorithm."

"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?" Natasha demands.

"It's a program for choosing Insight's targets."

"What targets?"

"You three," Zola says lightly, like blowing a bubble. "The rest of your little "Avengers" club. A journalist in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa City...anyone who is a threat to Hydra, now or in the future."

"How would you know who's a threat in the future?"

"How could I not? We did it before, with only paper records and word of mouth. Nowadays nearly everything can be accessed with a few keystrokes, if you know where to look. Bank records, medical files, voting patterns, emails, tax returns, test scores, the _census_...my algorithm evaluates people's pasts, to predict their futures. And if anything concerning arises, we can now take care of it immediately." Zola's face splits into a blood-dripping grin. "If you think eleven million exterminated in seven years was impressive, I would dearly love to see your reaction to eleven million in seven _minutes_. It is truly unfortunate for us all that you will predecease the Fourth Reich."

From outside they can hear the shriek of a quinjet engine, and shrill, oscillating alarm suddenly rings out overhead. The small windows are immediately closed behind metal blinds, and the click of four more locks securing the door is heard.

"Shit, _shit_ ," Natasha whispers, her face going white as she turns to Steve and Peggy. "This thing must having a homing device on it. That's why he said our names..."

"But this will be quite a treat regardless," Zola says, as Steve grabs Peggy and drags her behind him, so Natasha can hand her one of her guns from her belt under the safety of the shield. The sound of the door being rammed from the outside grows louder and louder with each blow. "It isn't as spectacular as the Insight Helicarriers, admittedly, but I'm rather fond of this particular weapon. It's one of my pet projects that I started all the way back in '42. We call it the Winter Soldier."

The Soldier gives up on kicking the door in, opting to shoot the locks apart instead. Whatever Zola continues to say is drowned out by the rush of blood and air to Steve's ears as he raises his shield and sprints forward, shoving the compromised door off of its hinges and into its assailant, throwing them both back and onto the ground. The Soldier struggles to throw the door, and Steve, off of his chest as Natasha and Peggy run out to flank them on either side; he finally gets his hands bent backwards by his head and launches himself into a back flip, sending Steve flying; the Soldier barely has time to straighten himself out before Peggy starts firing at him, but the bullets ricochet off the metal arm he raises to defend his already covered face.

The jet above them circles back; Steve scrambles to his feet in time for all four of them to scatter out from underneath the hail of bullets it rains down upon them. Natasha runs the perimeter of the assault, towards the Soldier, scaling a tree as Steve and Peggy run west; she launches herself at the Soldier from a branch, wrapping first her legs and then a garrote wire from her belt around his neck. He gets his hand between the wire and his throat before she can strangle him, and stumbles backwards into the tree she had leapt from, compromising her balance. She uses it as leverage to push off from him; he rips the gun she's holding out of her hand as she flips off of him, but as soon as she's on the ground she tosses a widow's bite onto his metal arm. The arm sparks and jerks, hanging limply by his side, and she goes to rush him, to get her gun back, but his flesh hand is already reaching to pull off the widow's bite, so she sprints past him instead, back towards where she, Steve, and Peggy had entered the forest.

Overhead the quinjet releases another onslaught, but not aimed at the ground this time, instead going for something in the air. The surrounding canopy obscures the view, so Steve sends up a quick prayer of thanks to whoever is distracting the quinjet as he rushes the Soldier again while he's aiming at Natasha's retreating form.

The Soldier catches sight of Steve from the corner of his eye and whirls around, stopping the shield with a metal fist. He drops and sweeps his leg out, knocking Steve off his feet and jumping straight up again; Steve jerks himself into a tight ball under the shield as the Soldier unloads the clip from Natasha's gun at him. The attack stops abruptly, and Steve tilts his head back to see Peggy standing over him, holding the trunk of an infant maple tree that she had torn out of the ground and swung into the side of the Soldier's head.

The Soldier rolls back onto his feet a few feet away from them just as Steve leaps onto his, yanking another gun from the holster on his back; Steve grabs Peggy and pulls her behind the shield as it deflects another clip. The Soldier drops the gun and runs towards them; Steve meets him a fourth of the way in and tries hitting him with the side of the shield, only for the Soldier to grab it with one hand and then block the punch Steve tries to throw at his stomach with the other. Peggy drops the tree, the Soldier sees her grabbing her gun out of her belt and aiming now that the Soldier's flank is exposed, and takes Steve's shield with his other hand, spinning it with such power that Steve is forced to release it and fall back; the last few bullets in Peggy's gun are lost when they bounce off the shield.

The Soldier throws the shield at Peggy; she drops her empty gun and manages to catch it, but the force sends her stumbling back. Steve runs at him; the Soldier pulls a knife out of the metal arm's inner side, forcing Steve to block it and throwing off his punch. Peggy recovers her bearings and circles the fight between the two men, looking desperately for an opportunity to attack the Soldier without hurting her husband.

She gets it when the Soldier manages to get his metal hand around Steve's throat and shoves him up against a tree, trying to get a strong enough hold to crush his windpipe. The shield flies through the air and bounces off the back of the Soldier's skull back into Peggy's hands, knocking him forward off balance; his stranglehold loosens enough for Steve to headbutt him and then drop down, skirting around him. The Soldier swings back with his metal arm but Steve catches it, twisting it with one hand; the other hand reaches around, grabbing the Soldier by the mask covering the lower half of his face and slamming him onto the ground. 

The mask comes off under the pressure of Steve's fingers. Peggy rushes forward with the shield as the Soldier finally regains his bearings and throws his feet over his head, flipping himself upright.

"Bucky?"

Peggy balks so suddenly and completely that the rush of blood to her head makes her vision flash black.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" the Soldier spits back, and it's him; it's his voice and his face and it's March 5th, 1945, stealing goodbye kisses in the pre-dawn darkness moments before the Howling Commandos leave base camp. 

" _Bucky_ ," Peggy chokes; he rounds on her, yanking another gun out of the holster on his thigh, and she almost doesn't even think to raise the shield to defend herself. "Oh my _God_ , Bucky, what did they do?" 

His face changes then, to something more than confused, almost scared; his fingers move against the trigger but his slowness gives Natasha just enough time to come flying out of the brush, her normal elegance sacrificed in order to knock him off his feet. Even through their numbness Steve and Peggy see the wire she has stretched between her hands. 

"No!" Peggy screams.

"Natasha, don't!" Steve yells. 

The Soldier--Bucky--rights himself, almost clumsily; his expression is wild now, addled, nearing terrified. He aims again like he's not sure who exactly, or even if, he's planning to shoot, and they don't find out; the quinjet's engine above them suddenly explodes, and sometime between the bright light of the explosion fading and the jet itself beginning to hurtle due east, towards the ocean, he's disappeared. 

Natasha spins, searching her surroundings, bracing for another attack. Someone calls from overheard and she throws her head back to look up; their ally against the quinjet is descending into the clearing. By the time War Machine touches ground, Steve and Peggy still have not moved. 

"Rhodey?" Natasha lowers her hands, the wire going slack. "What are you doing here?"

"You're welcome," Rhodey says, rolling his eyes. 

"Yes, thank you, now what are you doing here?"

"Looking for you three," Rhodey says, glancing at Steve and Peggy. "Maria showed up at my DC office this afternoon. Fury called her from the car before the attack at the mosque, like _right_ before. He didn't get to tell her much, but obviously she figured out something was up. And then when you guys went missing...she asked me to keep an eye on what SHIELD was doing. So when I saw that quinjet take off, I followed it. Now can you three tell me what _you're_ doing here?"

Peggy doesn't really realize that she's drifted over to Steve until she's got a death grip on his wrist. They're dimly aware of Natasha explaining the Lemurian Star and the flash drive and Zola and Project Insight, and then Natasha and Rhodey rushing past them into the half-destroyed safehouse, and they want to move, to help, but they're rooted to the spot and to each other, only looking up when they hear Natasha yell "Damn it!"

"What?" Steve calls in, loud but timeless. "What happened?"

Natasha emerges from the safehouse, brandishing the flash drive, now sporting a fresh bullet hole that had torn through the roof. "Computer bit the big one, too," she snaps, throwing the drive onto the ground. "There goes our proof."

"All three of you are wanted for questioning," Rhodey says. "I would assume that Tony's phone lines are being watched in case any of us try to call him."

"No one knows where Bruce is, _and_ Thor can't be in Asgard, otherwise Heimdall would've told him we needed him. _Hopefully_ ," Natasha mutters. "I could try reaching out to Clint, but I don't know how soon he could get to us..."

"All right, in...in any case," Steve says, forcing Captain America to the surface. "We need to get back to DC. If we're the only ones who can stop Project Insight, we can't wait."

"Hopefully the car made it out alive..." Peggy murmurs.

"Unless our assassin friend destroyed it after you two let him go," Natasha snaps.

"Natasha, that was--" Steve starts.

"That could not possibly have been the real Bucky Barnes. He died seventy years ago."

"They never found a body," Peggy counters. "Steve never...never saw him die."

"Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43," Steve says. "Zola...Zola experimented on him. I don't know what they did exactly, Bucky refused to talk about it and we never tried to make him but...whatever Zola did must've helped him survive the fall. And then Hydra must've found him and..."

"All right, I'm not... _entirely_ sure what's going on here," Rhodey says, after a beat of painful, heavy silence. "But you guys can explain in the car. We gotta go, _now_. Before another quinjet gets here."

The threat finally unglues Peggy and Steve's feet from the forest floor, and the four of them hastily make their way through the woods back towards the car. Peggy keeps her vice grip on Steve's wrist the entire way, even after they slide into the backseat of the thankfully undisturbed vehicle; she finds herself sitting in the empty middle seat, pressed up tightly against Steve.

"He looked right at us," Steve whispers, thick and aching. "He looked right at us and he didn't know us. He didn't even know his own _name_ , Peggy, he..."

Peggy bites down on her lower lip until it almost rips open. When she moves her mouth to speak the indents of her teeth are left behind.

"We're getting him back. I don't care what we have to do. We're bringing him home."

Natasha glances back at them from the driver's seat. Steve and Peggy meet her gaze unblinkingly, daring her to protest.

"We'll do what we can to help," Natasha says instead, and then resettles herself properly, turning the ignition without further comment, and flooring it.

*

The second quinjet came as Rhodey predicted, which is why Natasha elects to drive deeper into the park first, hitting up a park ranger's station and commandeering one of their vehicles, before going for one of the roads exiting the park. The task force only finds the Winter Soldier, and radios Pierce that there was some... _difficulty_ in getting him on board.

"We had to Sputnik him, sir," Rumlow reports. "He was...unstable. Erratic."

Pierce almost makes a joke about the Russians, but he's too on edge. The mosque attack had done its job, causing a public and federal panic; the Council had not only refused to consider delaying Project Insight, they had authorized its early commencement, setting it for tomorrow morning rather than Monday. They had come too far and were now too close to let science experiments from the goddamn _40s_ ruin everything.

The Soldier is coming out of his codeword-induced stupor, already strapped into the Cognitive Recalibration Machine ("the electric chair" is what the techs call it, and it's an apt nickname for a few reasons). He's slightly groggy whenever this happens, but not for very long, and as soon as he's aware enough to blink up at Pierce, the man orders a "Mission report."

The Soldier glances away.

"Mission. Report."

The Soldier's jaw flexes, but he doesn't move to speak. Pierce takes a calming breath; it doesn't work, and the Soldier's head turns with the force of the backhand Pierce gives him.

" _Now_."

The Soldier looks up at him again, with the same face he wears when he's first unfrozen, as they drag him to the chair and shock him into waking up, and it chills Pierce to the bone.

"Those people in the forest...who were they?"

Pierce's gut twists into a knot even as the answer spills easily from his lips. "That's none of your concern. They're people who should have been corpses by now. And they _would_ have been, if you had done your job."

There's a moment when the Soldier appears to be mulling over his words, his gaze downcast, and Pierce's anxiety eases. The Russians had said this about the Soldier when they transferred him to America, and Pierce had found that it held true; that he could be scolded into compliance, that he hated being embarrassed or, worse yet, doing wrong. 

"I knew them."

The nauseous feeling instantly returns and Pierce fights to get a hold on himself. "That's ridiculous. You've never met them before. We would know. Are you letting your mind wander, Soldier?"

That was the story they made sure he knew, whenever he became cognizant enough to question his existence; some of the younger Hydra recruits even believed it to be true, themselves. That the Soldier had been _made_ , not born; that he'd never had a life before or beyond Hydra. That he had always been their human _ish_ weapon; good for what they needed him for, but prone to...occasional malfunction. Daydreams that got a little too detailed, felt a little too real. A minor flaw in an otherwise perfect android; an easy, if painful, fix.

A malfunction hadn't happened so quickly in a long time. The Russians had figured that once the Soldier had killed the Starks with no qualms, that was that; he could be out for up to three days before needing to be wiped again. Captain America unmasking the Soldier should have compromised _him_ , not the weapon Hydra had spent seventy years perfecting.

"Hydra's work," Pierce says slowly, schooling his voice into something paternal, "is for the benefit of mankind. You've shaped the century, changed it for the better, with every mission we've set you on. And I need you to do it one more time."

The Soldier doesn't look up. Maybe it's working. 

"Humanity is at the tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow morning, we're going to give it a push towards the former. But if you let yourself get distracted, if you don't do your part, then I can't do mine. And then Hydra can't give the people the freedom they deserve."

No movement. Pierce stares down at him, waiting for an acknowledgement of his words; an acquiescence to his will. 

"I knew them."

Pierce resists the urge to slap him again. The words were as apologetic as they were bewildered and defensive, and overt violence won't be what snaps him out of it. Instead he sighs, loudly, making sure the Soldier knows how disappointed he is to have been made to do this, and gestures resignedly for a tech to come near. 

"Prep him."

The Soldier twitches violently. Pierce holds back the vindictive smile he desperately wants to give.

"But he's been out of cryo too long," the tech says, in the manner of an underling trying not to present his boss with too obvious a fact. 

"Then wipe him, and start over." They don't have time for cryo, but if the wiping can hold for twenty-four hours, twelve hours minimum, without being frozen into the Soldier's brain, then that's all they need. 

He strides out of the room as the Soldier starts screaming. He's never borrowing anything from the fucking Russians ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Natasha's name has some interesting etymology behind it. The consensus seems to be that her patronymic, Alianovna, implies her father (Alian) was of [Bashkir or Tatar ancestry](http://little-details.livejournal.com/3413461.html), i.e. of a mostly Muslim, Turkic population living along the Volga River. I dig me some Muslim Natasha, but also some Jewish Natasha, so in the immortal words of that little girl from the taco shell commercial, "porque no los dos?" Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad, Natasha's birthplace in the comics) has a Tatar presence and a small (very small) Jewish community, after all. 
> 
> What throws a spanner into the works is that Natasha is a diminutive of Nataliya, which means "Christmas Day"...not a very Muslim or Jewish choice. There can be any number of explanations for this, though: they just liked the name; it was for a laugh because she happened to be born on Christmas; she's named after someone; her parents were in hiding for whatever reason and they gave her a common name to help them blend in; the name was given to her by the Red Room...personally I like the idea that her name is actually a fusion of the Hebrew "Neta" and the Tatar "Aliya", spelled and pronounced as "Nataliya" to look suitably Russian, and she was subsequently nicknamed "Natasha".


	4. Until the Last of Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW semi-graphic descriptions of torture and rape; references to terrorism and the Holocaust; canon-typical violence with brief mentions of body horror**
> 
>  
> 
> So SHIELD. I have no idea how SHIELD is supposed to work in the MCU. Because it appears that they're a US federal agency (the Lemurian Star is trespassing when it's near India; Natasha has to testify before Congress regarding the DC incident), yet they're governed by an international council? I can't see the US being cool with that? So for this 'verse I'm gonna guess that the World Security Council is basically Marvel's version of the United Nations Security Council, and SHIELD was pitched by the SSR/Howling Commandos to the UN, who accepted it as a more martial version of the UN Peacekeepers and kept the headquarters in the US because it was the only major power following WWII that wasn't totally wrecked by the war. Yeah? Sounds good? Okay.
> 
> Also, just so certain things make sense in context (since I haven't gotten around to writing about WWIII's initial relationship negotiations/how Peggy and Bucky fell in love): because Peggy and Bucky didn't have the benefit of Vita-Rays the way Steve did, I imagine them both to have suffered from bouts of sudden full-body pain as their respective serums worked them over.

Natasha takes the long way back, to avoid them being picked up on anyone's radar, and Rhodey directs her not to any safehouse she's familiar with, but to what appears to be a civilian home. ("This is the address Maria gave me; I don't know what's special about it.") They rush, semi-crouched under the cover of darkness, to the front door; Rhodey raps Shave and a Haircut with his knuckles as lightly as he can, and the door opens quickly.

"I better not be being watched right now. If this place gets blown up, you're paying for it."

"Sam?" falls out of Steve's mouth, as Sam ushers them inside.

"In the flesh."

"How did you get dragged into this?"

Sam points in the direction of his living room. "Ask your boss."

"About time you got here," another familiar voice says from further in the house, and a look into the living room reveals Fury laying across Sam's couch, Maria and Sharon sitting, on the recliner and a kitchen chair that had been dragged into the room respectively, nearby.

"Hell of an attitude for a dead guy to have," is all Steve can think to say.

Fury gives a little roll of his eye. "How's the arm?" he asks, nodding slightly at Peggy.

"...Sore, I suppose," Peggy, who while not precisely surprised still feels stunned, says. "But all right. How are you...?"

"Took a cue from Hydra and had some Tetrodetoxin B ready. Slows the pulse down to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress; didn't work out for him, but SHIELD found a use for it."

Steve nods blankly, only half-listening; Fury's words brought up the image of Bucky tonguing a cyanide pill out of his jaw and biting down on it. He tries to shove the thought away before it gets to Bucky foaming at the mouth; he doesn't realize his hands are shaking until Peggy takes one of them. The way her fingers clamp around his tells him that she needs the support as well.

"That isn't the only cue SHIELD has been taking from Hydra," Peggy mutters.

"We accessed the flash drive," Natasha says in monotone, looking down at Fury with an unreadable expression.

"That sounds ominous," Sam says, turning back to face the group after making sure his blinds are fully closed.

"Wait a minute." Steve turns to Sam. "Original question. Why is everyone here at your house?"

"Agent Romanoff mentioned Mr. Wilson to me while you two were in California," Fury supplies.

Steve rounds on Natasha, finally able to work up enough anger to get past the numb shock. "Do you report _everyone_ Peggy and I talk to?"

"Just the people you could become seriously involved with," Natasha says, her inflection not changing.

"In any case, I took the liberty of doing a little research just before this particular shit hit my fan," Fury continues, before Steve can let loose on her. "Turns out Wilson here was already on SHIELD's radar."

"And why is that?"

"'Cause of this." Sam sets his hand on a coffee table beside him and picks up a folder. Steve takes it from his hand and upon opening it is greeted by a glossy photograph of Sam, a pair of giant metal wings sprouting from a pack strapped to his back. "You know Bakhmala? Khalid Khandil? That was me."

"The Falcon wings were offered to SHIELD, among other entities, by an independent weapons contractor," Fury elaborates. "We thought they were too conspicuous for frequent use, but we kept a prototype or two in storage at the Triskelion. And we...kept tabs, on the people from other organizations who ended up manning them."

"Agent Romanoff told me about Sam, too," Sharon pipes up. "In a strictly interpersonal capacity, though I did my own research, just to..." She looks a little sheepish, though Steve and Peggy are slightly more inclined to forgive her looking out for her family than Natasha reporting their personal life to Fury. "And for today, I figured that all our safehouses would be compromised, so this was the best place I could think of to put Grandpa. He's fine," she rushes to assure. "He was upset at first but I calmed him down. He's resting in Sam's bedroom." She gestures vaguely in the direction of the room she refers to.

"Thank you," Peggy manages to get to Sam before Fury begins speaking.

"Agent 13 was already at this safehouse when Agent Hill brought me here. Figured if things went south we'd need all the allies we could manage to get our hands on." He's clearly unhappy about having to put his trust in Sam sight unseen regardless.

"Always glad to be of service," Sam says, with just enough flatness to his voice to be humorous. "So anyway, as you were saying," he directs at Natasha. "You accessed a flash drive?"

"Did you know Zola's consciousness was downloaded into SHIELD's computer system?" Steve demands of Fury before Natasha can answer.

"Zola's the..." Sam says in a whisper.

"Hydra scientist," Natasha answers, in the same vein. "Paperclipped into SHIELD after World War II."

"I did," Fury says, over Natasha and Sam. "He was there the year I joined SHIELD. Worked with him long before I became director."

"And you didn't purge him from the system, _why_?" Peggy hisses.

"He was useful. And under control. So I surmised at the time," he adds on, well-versed enough in expressions to be able to read Steve, Peggy, and Natasha's faces. "I take it...?"

"Insight is compromised," Natasha says. " _SHIELD_ is compromised, all of it. Zola wrote a program for choosing Insight's targets. And it's not...it's us. It's the Avengers, it's any number of civilians. Anyone Hydra thinks is a threat."

"You think there's enough people involved for this to be organizational? Hydra, not just Zola?" Fury asks, though there's no real note of disbelief in his voice.

Natasha nods. "Zola told us as much. Every major crisis in the past seventy years, Hydra's been feeding it from inside SHIELD. I think we have to assume that anyone involved in Project Insight...anyone at SHIELD...could be Hydra."

Fury nods, slowly, and settles back into the couch cushions. "All right. Agent Hill." Maria straightens up. "We're gonna need them after all."

"Need what after all?" Steve asks, as Maria reaches down by her feet and picks up a briefcase, pieces of the dirt it had been buried in still clinging to it. She hands it to Fury, who sets the dial lock to the correct combination, before allowing his thumb print to be read, and then dialing another combination that pops the lid open.

"These," he turns the case around, showing off three shining blue server blades set in foam rubber, "are our kill switches."

"Told you he wasn't an idiot," Natasha murmurs, with a faint smile. 

"Inside each Hellicarrier is a server blade that I would presume is infected with this algorithm. We breach the carriers, we replace that server blade with one of our own."

"And what would that do?" Steve asks. 

"Change the targets from whoever Hydra chose to the helicarriers themselves." Fury glances at Rhodey. "They're specifically designed to withstand energy blasts from suits like yours and Stark's. You'd be able to break the glass, but that's about it. Once they're in the air the only thing that'll bring them down is one of the other ships."

"How're we going to reach the carriers?" Sharon asks. "I don't think any of us can just swipe into the building at this point, not even me."

"The army's not gonna move fast enough to prevent this," Rhodey says. "Especially if I don't have any proof that this is happening."

"This can't go anywhere until the helicarriers are destroyed in any case," Steve says. "SHIELD's got connections with every government and military in the UN. There's no telling who and how far they've reached. It is literally up to us."

"All I've got is my personal weapons cache and one photostatic mask," Maria says. "That's all I had with me when Fury called. You think we can storm the building with that?"

"We're gonna have to."

"Not everyone in that building is Hydra," Peggy points out. "Anyone, but not everyone. If there are enough actual SHIELD agents in the building and we can convince them of what's going on..."

She trails off, looking unconvinced by her own supposition, and Maria offers an encouraging half-smile. "Steve does inspire a certain amount of awe. I'd say there are a lot of people in the Triskelion who are more loyal to Captain America than to SHIELD itself." She glances apologetically at Fury. "No offense." 

He rolls his one good eye but offers no quarrel. "If there's enough of them there, we can hopefully prevent the launch from happening at all instead of having to destroy the ships. Root out whoever's with Hydra and salvage what we can from this mess."

"No." Every head in the room turns towards Steve. "We're not salvaging anything. _Salvaging_ is what put Zola here in the first place. It all has to go. SHIELD, Hydra, everything. Gone."

"I don't think that's your call, Captain," Fury says, his voice low, dangerous.

"What do all of Schmidt's people say?" Steve presses, glancing at Peggy from the corner of his eye. " _Cut off one head; two more will take its place_. Well this time we won't give them the chance to regenerate. We can't afford to."

"Steve, we're talking about _SHIELD_ ," Rhodey cuts in. "We can't just... _carpet-bomb_ an entire UN agency out of existence."

"If we actively try to rescue any part of SHIELD, Hydra's gonna use it to rebuild. We can't give them that. They've taken too much already."

"You're compromised, Steve," Natasha says quietly, as Peggy's expression makes her agreement with Steve obvious.

"What do you mean by compromised?" Sam asks, glancing worriedly between Natasha and Steve.

"According to these two, back during the war Sergeant James Barnes was captured and experimented on by Zola," Natasha explains. "After Barnes fell from the train in the Alps, he was found by Hydra agents and, somehow, turned into their own supersoldier. They call him the Winter Soldier. And we know this because Hydra sent him to attack us when we opened the flash drive. They," she gestures to Steve and Peggy, "recognized him as Barnes."

"Oh my God..."

"I didn't know about _that_ ," Fury offers quietly. "As far as I knew Barnes died in '45."

"Would you have told us if you knew about it?" Peggy snaps. "Or would you have compartmentalized that, as well?"

"I'm not compromised about this," Steve cuts in, glaring at Natasha. "It's not, it's not about him; it's about us. SHIELD was supposed to protect people's freedom, wasn't it? But everyone there, whether they knowingly hail Hydra or not, everyone was on board with a project like Insight. And yes," he aims at Fury, "you recognized that it was dangerous and took precautions, but no one looked at this project, no one saw how much power it puts in the hands of its user, and thought that _maybe_ we shouldn't pursue something like this at all. And now we're at the point where millions of people, millions of _civilians_ , could die within minutes, all because _we_ started thinking too much like _them_. Because _that_ is what Hydra does; they use whatever means they have to terrorize people into submission. _That_ is what SHIELD has become. So, no. It has to go. All of it, before we come up with an even _worse_ idea for Hydra to use."

A stunned silence greets the end of his tirade; after a moment Fury opens his mouth, but Peggy intercepts. "Director, everything SHIELD has done since Zola was recruited has been due to Hydra's influence, if it wasn't a direct order. _Everything_ has led up to this point. SHIELD...I..." She thinks of the Commandos, and Phillips, and Howard, and her heart squeezes in her chest but she forces herself to continue. "I loathe to say this, but SHIELD, as it should have been, never really existed."

"Oh my God," Sharon murmurs, pressing a hand against her forehead and shoving her hair back.

"They're right," Maria whispers, Fury looks to her, and her weak smile is regretful and unapologetic. "Nick, they're right."

"Not that you give a rat's ass about my opinion, probably, but I'm with them," Sam pipes up. "Scorched earth policy sounds like it's the best way to go, here. We probably won't be able to catch every single Hydra son of a bitch, but we can at least flush most of them out."

Fury glances at Sam, and then Natasha, who looks away; Maria and Sharon, who meet his gaze unflinchingly; Rhodey, whose frown is a hesitant but not unconvinced one; and finally to Steve and Peggy, who make it plain that they'll pursue this course of action with or without his blessing. His slightly open mouth closes with an audible exhalation, and he settles back--or possibly deflates--into the couch, finally looking as vulnerable as his injuries should have rendered him. "Let the record show that I was against this."

"How are you suggesting we flush them out?" Rhodey directs at Sam. "Pull a Snowden?"

"Well, if everything SHIELD has is potentially false or compromised, that could justify public exposure," Sharon muses, sounding a little helpless for all that. "In this case it'd be more dangerous to keep the intelligence classified than to release it. We can just...hope that the whole world sees it that way."

"I could keep you alive in Russia, if it came to that," Natasha murmurs, a little humor finally injecting itself into her tone, though it remains mostly flat.

"Asgard doesn't have an extradition treaty with Earth," Peggy allows herself to laugh.

"Jesus," Rhodey mutters, his eyes shutting lightly as his tries to process the thought. "God, you guys are worse than Tony."

"You're not going to be able to access SHIELD's intel without two Alpha-level members providing retinal clearance," Fury says. "That would be me and Pierce. Who I think we can safely assume ordered the hit on me. He might not be terribly compliant."

"Or even in the building. It's...God, what time is it, even?" 

"We could try to find him beforehand, at his home address," Sharon offers. 

"A pigeon can't shit on Pierce's property without getting vaporized," Fury informs her. "That house is probably more heavily armed than the Triskelion itself. Whoever went would just risk getting caught or killed. Or at the very least tipping him off. This is assuming he's even home to begin with."

"With only the eight of us the element of surprise is literally our best weapon," Steve says. "We'll have to take Pierce at the same time we sabotage the helicarriers."

"That's cutting it spectacularly close," Sam warns.

"It might be our only option," Fury answers for Steve. "The Insight Bay is sealed off during night shift. No one can get in or out without two Alpha members allowing it. So, again, it would take both Pierce and I to get you in at this time of night."

"How do we get to Pierce?" Rhodey asks.

"He's definitely going to be there for the launch," Sharon says. "Which is now set for tomorrow morning at 0900 rather than Monday." She had become privy to that piece of information just before leaving the hospital.

"So will the Council," Fury supplies. "There's your UN presence."

"I've got an idea," Peggy pipes up. "We're going to need that photostatic mask," she addresses Maria. "Is that the only thing you have that we can use for disguise? You don't happen to have wigs or clothes or anything?"

"I do, actually," Maria says, blinking. "What are you...?"

"One of the council members is a woman, right? We intercept her before she gets to the Triskelion, we replace her with one of us girls." She flicks her gaze between the other three women in the room.

"I could probably pull that off the best," Natasha offers wryly. "Not to insult the skills of anyone else here."

"You're about the same height and build as Hawley," Fury confirms. "13's got the hair and Carter's got the accent, but neither of them have the body type."

"I've got a blonde wig we could cut..." Maria says, thinking of the suitcase of weapons and costume pieces that serves as her constant travel companion.

"So we'll get Natasha into the Council Room first," Steve says. "Then we storm the building, get the wings out of storage, announce our presence, and haul ass to Insight Bay while Fury, you get to Natasha and Pierce and release the information. Rhodey or Sam, either of you can fly Fury to the roof so he can get in."

"Probably better if I do it," Rhodey says. "If we get shot at, my armor's better."

Steve nods. "Best case scenario, there are enough actual SHIELD agents to prevent the launch from happening altogether, and we can destroy the helicarriers on our own time. Worst case...we'll have to get on board the carriers and sabotage them before they can kill anyone."

"The carriers don't weaponize until they're 3,000 feet in the air, at which point they link with SHIELD's Insight satellites and can actually acquire targets," Maria says. "So in either scenario, if we're gonna destroy them completely, we can't do it until after they launch."

"So, great, if they make it into the air tomorrow morning we've got, what, a ten-minute window to keep Armageddon from raining down on us all?" Sam asks, casting his gaze heavenward. "Great."

"And how are you guys getting _into_ the building?" Rhodey asks. "I think we can assume they've wiped all your clearances. Including," he turns to Fury, "your retinal scan."

"Let's just say," Fury drawls, "that if you're trying to stay one step ahead of me," he reaches up, pulling his eyepatch onto his forehead, revealing a washed-out iris surrounded by a mass of scarred skin, "you need to keep both eyes open." He covers his eye again as Rhodey nods and Sam whistles low and soft.

"All right, Maria, go get whatever you have to make Natasha look like Hawley," Steve says, and Maria nods just before she disappears into the kitchen, where she had left her suitcase. "And all of you, rest up in the meantime. We should be in position to intercept the councilwoman's car by 0630, to be safe."

"Yes sir," Rhodey says, with a mock salute that is just regimented enough to not be sardonic, and they share a weak smile.

"I'm gonna go check on Grandpa..." Sharon murmurs, moving to follow Maria, the bedroom being on the other side of the kitchen.

"Can I talk to you two for a second?" Sam says to Steve and Peggy before they can follow Sharon, gesturing for them to follow him into the hallway, and they do, already prepared for what he's going to say. "I can't see Hydra... _not_ having a supersolider on hand for an op like this."

"We can't either," Peggy says.

Sam crosses his arms, frowning at her. "Look, I'll level with you. I have no firsthand experience with them, none that I know of at least, but Hydra doesn't seem like they half-ass anything. If they could get Barnes onto their side, enough to use him against _you two_ , there's a real possibility that he won't be recoverable."

"No," Steve says, shaking his head. "That's not...he recognized us, Sam. A least a little bit. Enough that it threw him off. Got him to stop attacking us and retreat."

"Whatever they did to him," Peggy says, trying hard not to think too much about what that might have been, "they didn't...they didn't change his heart, Sam, just his mind. We...we can get him back. And we will."

"You said it yourself," Steve cuts in, before Sam can object. "Things you lose can come back to you. Hydra's going in the trash tomorrow, come hell or high water, but Bucky's not going with them. We won't allow it. We are _not_ throwing him away."

"It might not be up to you," Sam says, schooling firmness and gentleness together in his voice and expression.

"We'll do whatever we can to save him without compromising the mission," Peggy says, and Sam looks at Steve, who nods once, like a gavel banging. Sam's counseled enough people to know when arguments are not only going to fall on deaf ears, but would be counter-productive, and he raises his hands, palms out, in capitulation.

"All right. I'll do whatever I can to help you, under the same condition."

"Thank you, Sam," Steve says, and offers a weak smile. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this."

"Don't apologize," Sam says, fixing the pair of them with a hard, almost scared look. "But don't make me regret it, either."

*

The Soldier dreams during cryo sleep; like a normal human mind, this is necessary for its functioning. Most of his dreams are the sort of quasi-linear absurdism that one would expect from a REM cycle, albeit often colored in crimson and explosions. Every once in awhile though, he'll dream of falling from a great height, from a world covered in snow. When he hits the ground it's as though a feather landed instead of his bulk; instead of blinding white he's surrounded by warm tans and browns and muted reds, and the cloud-covered sky is replaced by one decorated with innumerable stars.

Even though he's on his back when he lands, it's as if someone is behind him; he's pressed up against someone's chest, and hands--sometimes they're small and bird-like; sometimes he knows they're strong enough to break his bones, if they wanted to--wrap around him, one on his chest, one cupping his face. A third hand settles on his right knee, and a fourth on his left hip; he looks and looks but he can't see who their owner is, only that they also lay claim to a cascade of brown curls and a vibrantly red dress.

Every once in awhile they'll speak to him, the sounds coming as if from a distance; most of the time it's nonsense fragments, or things that might have meant something if the context was provided. His favorite, insofar as he is capable of having favorites (he never remembers this dream until he's having it again), is when the person holding him--he's sure it's that one, not the other--says _"I could never be happy without you, Buck."_

 _"Let me help you with that, darling_ ," the other one will say in turn, when it's the best version of this fantasy. _"I know how it feels."_

Their voices are glittering, rich and deep and soft; they're good in the way soap is good, the way wine is good, and when he adds his own voice, when his dream-self promises _"I'm with you to the end of the line,"_ the words echoing up from somewhere unknown, someplace far away and nearer than his heartbeat all at once, he almost feels like it matches, like he belongs with them. _I'm with you, I'm with you I'm with you I'm with_

The Soldier is not in cryo, but he's momentarily senseless nonetheless. They've shocked him as many times as they dare, with as high a voltage as they can without incapacitating him (one time they nearly killed him; that was twenty minutes? two months? forty years? ago), and are waiting for him to come up for air, so to speak; he barely resurfaces before they speak.

"Zilánie. Ržávyj. Simnátsatʹ. Rassvét. Péčʹ. Dévjitʹ."

The hands aren't so much torn away from him as they dissolve, partially into his skin, partially into thin air. The sky above him darkens; snow begins to fall.

"Dabrasirdéčnyj. Vozvraščénije na ródinu. Adín."

"Come back," the Soldier, his dream-self, rasps brokenly, more pathetic and weak than he's ever possibly been allowed to be. His hands scramble futilely for something to hold onto; he's floating like he's one of the snowflakes being tossed by the wind, like he's a carcass being dragged away by wolves. " _Please_ come back, I'm with you, please, I'm..."

"Gruzavój vagón."

An awful shrieking noise, the squeal of a train slamming on its brakes, fills up his brain, catapulting him into reality. Something that sounds like a name being shouted intermingles with the screech of a train struggling on tracks, but there is no one yelling; when the static clears there's merely an array of stoic, silent faces regarding him. There's another hand on his face now, neither frail nor affectionate, turning his head this way and that as a penlight shines in his eyes. On the Soldier's right a monitor beeps, signalling that his IV bag is empty; on his left is a scan of his brain activity as it is now.

"Dobroye utro, Soldat."

"Ya gotov vypolnit'," comes automatically.

The man lets go of his face; puts the flashlight down. "Vse styorli," he says, with obvious satisfaction and palpable relief; he even pats the Soldier's head before he spins in his seat and switches to heavily accented English. "He's ready."

 _I'm with you_ is quiet as they uncuff his arms and wrists and legs and ankles from the chair. _I'm with you_ is down to a whisper as he stands up. _I'm with you_ is drowned out as his mission is relayed to him.

 _I'm with you_ is lost.

Almost.

*

There are only so many way to get to the Triskelion, and they catch Councilwoman Hawley at the farthest point away from the building that they can before they had to consider several paths. On the whole she takes being hijacked rather well; she's initially enraged to see Fury, but eight people inclusive of Captain American, Agent Carter, and War Machine all telling her the same story is rather convincing. Her blue skirt suit is thankfully not custom-fit, because it molds to Natasha's body beautifully; Hawley even hands over a pair of white gloves, to hide Natasha's younger, smoother hands. There's no chauffeur to contend with ("I drove a jeep during the war, of course I drive myself"), so Natasha takes the wheel and drives away as the rest of them ferret Hawley away to a safe hiding spot.

Thankfully it's a warm, dry day, as they have to swim the river to get back to the Triskelion without being noticed. Fury ("I've done triathlons with worse injuries than this, Hill; I assure you I can survive this") takes them on a route that he had devised long ago, to the one spot where they can avoid the security cameras if they don't stray from following his footsteps. It leads to a hatch dug into the high ground around the back of the building, several floors above the hangar serving as the Insight Bay; the hangar is not accessible this way, but the emergency stairwell is, via a wall that pulls away from one of the landings.

Fury and Rhodey follow the rest of the group until they reach the level that holds storage; once Fury's dead eye grants Sam access to the Falcon wings, they turn back. Sharon and Peggy split off when they reach the floor for the Insight launch technicians, crouching behind the door into the floor proper, as Steve, Maria, and Sam continue upwards, to the room where the PA system is staffed. Natasha had sacrificed one of her widow's bites to cause interference, to get the staffers' attention when their microphone shorted; Maria activates it now, and sure enough, a few seconds later, the door is opened by one of them.

She almost feels bad, seeing the poor man's face with two guns pointed at it. She can tell Steve does, too, because he says "Excuse me," before pushing past him. There aren't many other staff members in the room, not enough to feel they can overpower Captain America, Agent Hill, and whoever they've decided is in their league enough to have their six, and Sam and Maria only need a few moments to herd them all into an easily guarded corner as Steve takes their place.

"Attention all SHIELD agents," Steve says into the microphone, and he can almost feel the whole building go silent. "This is Steve Rogers. You've probably heard a lot about me, and Agent Carter, and the Black Widow over the past 18 hours or so. And I think it's time you know the truth." There's a pulse of regret, of disbelief that he's saying this now, but he presses onward. "SHIELD is not what we thought it was. It's been infiltrated by Hydra. And Alexander Pierce is their leader. The STRIKE and Insight crews are Hydra as well, and there might be more. We don't know who, but we know they're in the building. They could be sitting right next to you."

Dimly he hears trust start breaking down, as the staffers behind him shuffle against and away from each other.

"They almost have what they want: absolute control. They ordered Nick Fury's death, and it won't stop there. If you launch those helicarriers today, Hydra will be able to kill anyone they want. Anyone they deem a threat to..." he forces himself to vomit up the words, "to the Fourth Reich. Unless we stop them. I know I'm asking a lot. The price of freedom is high. Always has been, always will be. It's a price I'm willing to pay, and if I'm the only one then so be it. But I'm willing to bet that I'm not. And I'm hoping you'll prove me right."

From their spot behind the door Peggy and Sharon slowly rise up, angling their faces so they can see into the small window between the staircase and the room, so they can see in with minimum chance of being spotted themselves.

"Oh, man..." Sharon breathes, as she sees Rumlow cross the room, headed for a tech she's shared a table with in the Triskelion's cafeteria several times; a talented programmer who had risen in the ranks due to his exceptional ability to meet his supervisor's needs, but a weedy little thing for all that, hired without Fury's direct input ("I'm sure he wouldn't've hired me if he had been involved"). 

"Pre-empt the launch sequence," they can hear Rumlow order him. "Put those ships in the air." There's a pause, as the tech reaches for his mouse, and then balks. "Is there a problem?"

"Cameron, no..." Sharon whispers, as though such a low frequency could make it to him, and it almost seems to, because she can see him shake his head.

"Is there a _problem?_ " Rumlow barks, and Cameron cringes like a child waiting to be hit. The air itself is heavy and pulsing as Cameron slowly uncurls himself, his right hand finally settling on his mouse, and Peggy puts her own hand on the door handle.

"I'm, I'm not...I'm not gonna launch those ships." Cameron's voice is weak, but loud and almost steady. "Captain's orders."

"Step away from your station." Rumlow reaches to his right hip and draws a gun, the muzzle of it ending half an inch away from Cameron's head, and Peggy yanks the handle down, shoving the door open.

"Like he said," Sharon calls, coming into view first as Peggy remains hidden behind the door, striding quickly towards Rumlow with her gun pointed at his head; around her other agents are drawing their guns, aiming at her, aiming at each other. "Captain's orders."

Rumlow looks at her out of the corner of his eye, avoiding any sudden moves. "I know he's family, Agent, but you're on the wrong side."

"Depends on what you stand for."

Rumlow regards her for another few, deadly silent seconds, before his hand falls away from the back of Cameron's head, and his gun clatters to the floor. Then in a flash he's grabbed a knife, camouflaged at his thigh, and sliced up, cutting open the side of Sharon's arm. Her gun drops as she does, falling into Rumlow's hand, and as it and every other gun in the room starts to go off she kicks Cameron out of the way, forcing him to fall from his chair. As she crawls under the desk, twisting her arm and pressing her wound against her side, she hears Peggy slam the door out of her way and join in the shootout; another agent's gun falls within reach and once she leaps to her feet, but Rumlow is dragged out of her line of fire when Cameron tackles his legs, bringing him to the floor.

A bullet whizzes by her head and Sharon whirls around to return fire; someone jumps in front of Rumlow, blocking Peggy's shot; and Rumlow struggles his way free of Cameron's weak hold, kicking the tech in the head as he scrambles to his feet and hunches over the desktop, furiously typing in Cameron's place. The man guarding him goes down and Peggy's next bullet grazes his shoulder; he ducks further, finishing his task in a second and a half and then taking off to the door on other side of the room.

 **SYSTEM OVERRIDE** flashes on the computer monitor as Peggy chases after him.

*

"They've initiated the launch," Maria's voice rings out over the PA system. Most of the staffers have fled the room; two who revealed themselves to be Hydra were dispatched by her gun as Steve and Sam took off for the stairs, and one of them is at her side, accessing security video footage of the river as the hatch to the Insight Bay pushes up out of the water and begins to open.

From the topmost floor of the Triskelion, Pierce and the Council, held at gunpoint by Rollins and two other guards Natasha has decided to refer to as "the goons", are watching the same scene from the window.

"If Pakistan were to march into Mumbai tomorrow," Pierce directs at Councilman Singh, "and you knew that they were gonna drag your daughters into a soccer stadium for execution, and you could stop it with a flick of a switch...wouldn't you?" He glances at the other Council members. "Wouldn't you all?"

"Not if it was your switch," Singh returns evenly, in a flat hiss.

Pierce huffs, almost smiling at the man's brave face, before turning to gesture to Rollins to draw his gun. His back is turned when a cry of surprise goes up, and he barely manages to dive out of the way when the glass shatters behind him. From the corner of his eye he sees Hawley reach up her sleeve and throw something at one of his guards; it lands on his neck and immediately fells him with an electrical charge. He hears the unmistakable noise of an energy surge to his left, and Rollins screams as his gun and the hand holding it is vaporized, the wound instantly cauterizing as he falls unconscious to the floor. Hawley charges past him for the third guardsman, evading the man's thrown punch to duck under his arm, reach back, grab his face, and slam him down backwards so his head smashes against the floor. By the time he makes it to his feet, Hawley has the guard's gun in hand and pointed at him.

"I'm sorry," she says, reaching to her ear, and her voice starts to distort as her face morphs into that of Natasha's. "Did we ruin the moment?"

"Must sting, getting upstaged by a dead guy," someone says from behind him, and Pierce turns on his heel to see Fury standing there, aiming another gun at him.

"I'm gonna go cover Cap and Falcon," Rhodey says from beside Fury; he keeps his eyes on Pierce as he backs away, until he can step out of the broken window and start his descent in freefall; a rush of wind tells them when he actively starts flying.

"Sorry I didn't send flowers," Pierce offers Fury, almost sounding sincere. "Been a tad busy." Fury regards him in silent anger, and he tries again. "I'm glad you're here, Nick."

"Really." Fury steps forward, nodding in Natasha's direction, and Pierce hears the click of her heels as she heads for his computer. "'Cause I thought you ordered me killed."

"You know how the game is played," Pierce returns smoothly. "In fact, you were on board with it, until yesterday."

"I was not _on board_ with my anti-terrorist organization becoming a haven for fascists and Neo-Nazis."

"Call us what you will, Nick; we have the same enemies as you. Disorder. Chaos. _War_. It's only a matter of time before a dirty bomb goes off in Moscow, or an EMP fries Chicago, and you know it. Or, alternatively," he spreads his arms out to his sides, "I can bring peace and order to seven billion innocent people by sacrificing maybe..." he shrugs, "twenty million undesirables. And not even by utilizing the barbaric devices of my forebears, as you would consider them to be. No hangings, no death marches, no gas chambers."

"No staging terror attacks?" Natasha calls from behind them.

"No more of that," Pierce says, like he's just promised not to yell at a child. "Something so... _admittedly_ underhanded will no longer be necessary. Just one kill shot from 3,000 feet in the air, and it's done. Euthanasia at its most refined." He grimaces, to show them that even he himself finds the method a little distasteful, if ultimately merciful. "It's the next step, Nick. If you have the courage to take it."

"I have the courage _not to_ ," Fury says, and now he's close enough to press the muzzle of his gun against Pierce's ribcage, pushing him towards the retinal scanner. Pierce's scoff of how Fury's clearance has been erased is cut off when Fury lifts away his eyepatch, and the AI accepts the scan of his dead eye; Fury's free hand grabs the back of Pierce's head, forcing him to look into his own scanner.

"Alpha Level confirmed," the AI announces. "Decryption code accepted. Safeguards removed."

"What are you doing?" Pierce asks in a low voice.

"Disabling the encryption that protects all of SHIELD's intel," Natasha answers for Fury. "Excuse me, _Hydra's_ intel. And then making it available for public consumption on the World Wide Web, as our Lord Bill Gates intended."

" _All_ of our intel?" Pierce says. "Schematics? Weapons designs? Agents' information?"

"That _would_ be included in all of it, wouldn't it?" Natasha replies briskly.

"Your own information?" Pierce presses, and Natasha's fingers arrest over the keyboard. "The Red Room? The children's hospital? Are you sure you're ready for the world to see you as you really are, _Nataliya Alianovna?_ "

His voice is dripping with snide disdain. Her face, hidden as she's been staring at the keyboard, looks up, as purposely blank as she can make it.

"Are you?"

*

Rhodey makes it to the hangar just in time to avoid getting taken out by a missile. He aims an energy blast at the offending weapon; Steve yells over the comm that "I was _right there_ , Rhodey!" and he's about to retort when bullets bounce off the back of his armor, and he whips around to see a quinjet firing at him.

"Like deja vu all over again," is what he ends up muttering, as he aims another blast in their direction.

Nearer to the tarmac Sam whizzes by Steve's head, firing the two guns in his hands at the men approaching Steve from behind as Steve takes out the ones directly in front of him with the shield. One of the men drops a grenade as he falls; Steve runs to it and throws it away, taking out a quinjet and a half a beat after it lands.

He can barely hear the roar of the Falcon suit's jet engines as they fly towards him, but he definitely feels Sam take him by the arms and lift him into the air. From above them, Rhodey destroys another quinjet rising off the hangar before it can even hope to give chase, and then swoops below them to provide cover as Sam flies for the Alpha carrier, already several hundred feet in the air.

Steve curls into a ball, the shield pulled up against his chest, as Sam swings him back and then throws him through the glass underbelly of the Alpha helicarrier. He lingers just long enough to make sure Steve grabs onto an interior steel beam before dropping down and shooting off towards the Bravo carrier. A missile comes close enough for him to feel the heat of it approaching before Rhodey shoots it out of the way; he can barely call out "Thanks, man!" before tucking himself into his own ball and smashing through Bravo's glass.

Four guns immediately begin shooting at him from two support beams on either side of the walkway proper, and he soars out of the way, up and over the guards. One is caught in friendly fire as Sam loops behind him, and his partner is shoved off the support beam and through the hole in the glass when Sam roundhouse kicks him from behind. A bullet grazes the side of Sam's leg as he charges towards the last two guards, but the adrenaline is enough to let him ignore the pain as he shoots his assailant, and the edge of his left wing clips the fourth Hydra agent in the neck and shoves him off the beam.

Sam doesn't look to see if he's decapitated the man or merely sliced his throat when he circles around and comes to land on the walkway so that the carnage is behind him. He's seen enough corpses, even enemy ones, to last a lifetime.

The server blades are protected at the core of the carriers, but a code punched into a keypad brings them down a chute, the protective doors opening up to reveal a server blade like the one Sam has tucked safely into a pocket on his shoulder strap. He can hear shouts above him, and he hastily tugs the offending blade out with the two fingers of one hand as he undoes the velcro to the pocket. Hydra's blade falls to his feet and with his now-free hand he shoots the two men coming down the stairs from the upper deck of the carrier. He shakes Fury's blade out of the plastic casing protecting it and wedges it into place as one more Hydra guard descends the stairs leading to the top of the carrier; his bullets miss Sam as he jumps off the walkway, and opens his wings once he clears the broken glass.

"Bravo lock!"

He dodges the bullets coming from the roof of the Bravo carrier and whatever missiles and planes that Rhodey can't destroy or redirect as he makes for the third helicarrier. Charlie is almost within reach when his luck runs out and Sam is wrenched violently off his flight path, the clang of metal slamming against and then tearing off his left wing ringing through his ears as loud as the whistle of the wind as he suddenly begins to freefall. His hand fumbles for the cord to his parachute only to find it taken with the wing, and he's too paralyzed to scream when something explodes far above him and a blur of silver emerges from it, diving after and catching him, curling around him to protect him from falling shrapnel and flying bullets.

"Shit, shit Sam, I'm sorry!" Rhodey is yelling when Sam's senses return to him. "I tried to catch it and throw it out of the way but the damn thing was moving too fast..."

Rhodey dodges three more missiles and shoots down a quinjet as he flies towards the roof of the Triskelion; Sam's recovered enough to brace himself for landing. The missiles can't be fired so close to the building, giving Sam half a second to breathe before he pulls the third server blade from another pocket on his shoulder strap, holds it out to Rhodey, and tells him to "Go, take care of Charlie!" He stumbles back, giving Rhodey room to blast off, the blade tucked inside a compartment built into War Machine's left arm, full throttle towards the Charlie carrier.

There's a helicopter next to him on the roof, presumably there for Pierce's use, and as Sam sloughs off his now-useless set of wings he's grateful that he started out as a pilot.

*

"Carter, Rumlow's headed for the Council," Maria announces in Peggy's ear.

"Roger that," Peggy mumbles into her wrist communicator. Rumlow had given her the slip on the stairs when she was ambushed by three more Hydra agents; after dispatching them she had started making her way cautiously across floors and upstairs, stepping over the bleeding bodies that Rumlow, presumably, had left in his wake. A quick glance at one of them revealed that he had been looted, meaning Rumlow had acquired a new gun to complement his knife.

With a firm destination now Peggy can start to hurry up the stairs, ramping up the noise of her shoes on the steps to call his attention. She expects him to be waiting for her on the top floor, and when she creaks the door open only for a bullet to bounce off of it, she's proven correct.

"You and that goddamn husband of yours," Rumlow calls, as Peggy slams the door shut again. "I'm really looking forward to seeing you two get shot all to hell."

He fires another bullet, taking out the small door window above Peggy's head, and she flinches as the glass rains down on her, squeezing her eyes shut to protect them.

"Hey, and you know, once this is over we've got no need for your boyfriend anymore," Rumlow continues loudly, and Peggy bites her lip, reminding herself that she's beyond being taunted. "Unless Pierce wants to keep him for sentimental reasons, but I doubt that. So you'll all get to die together, won't that be sweet."

Peggy leaps up and fires two shots out of the broken window before ducking back down. She had moved too fast to see if she had gotten him, and she swears under her breath when he begins talking again.

"He remembered you, you know. Your darling Bucky Barnes." She's above this, she's above being goaded, but there's a knot burning in her stomach, spreading out to her arms, making her fingers tremble. "You shoulda heard him, whimpering like a kicked puppy. _But I knew them_ ," Rumlow imitates, his voice climbing up an octave; he punctuates it with another shot, this time to the door handle, shattering it on his side and making the one on hers rattle. "He got real torn up about it. They had to fry his brain _four fucking times_ to get him to work again."

Peggy grabs onto the handle of the door and then commands herself to not lose focus. Her other hand slowly pockets her gun, and braces itself on the middle hinge opposite the handle.

"He's pretty useful once you get him under control, though," Rumlow starts up again, and she'd be surprised that she could hear him, what with the way her blood is pounding in her ears, if she were currently capable of abstract thought. "Gonna be a shame to get rid of him; he's the greatest asset Hydra's ever had. Just goes out and kills whoever we tell him to, no questions asked. Boom, headshot, every time." She's coiled so tightly that another shot, aimed at the bottom of the door so that the bullet gets lodged underneath it, makes her whole body jerk. "But you know what? For all that ruthlessness? Put a dick in his mouth and he'll suck like a Hoover. It's incredible."

He's been edging closer to the door as he speaks, waiting for her face to appear in the windowframe for him to shoot point-blank, so he's not ready for Peggy to rip the door off its hinges and plow into him with it. He stumbles back and escapes it before she can slam him to the floor, trying desperately to shoot around it, but it throws off his perspective just enough for Peggy to swing it to the side and then into him, sending him almost flying. The gun he had stolen falls from his hand and clatters closer to Peggy than to himself; he scrambles to his feet almost as soon as he hits the floor and takes off, leaving it behind. Peggy throws the door after him, catching him by the leg and bringing him to his knees; she pulls her gun out and manages to get him in the shoulder before he gets to his feet and rounds the corner into a hallway.

He's running past the councilroom when Peggy decides that shooting is too good for him and with a sudden burst of energy and rage tackles him from behind, her hands wrapping around the back of his neck, dragging him back and to the right so that she throws him through the councilroom's window. She's dimly aware of the shouting around her as she jumps in after him, but he's already recovered his senses, and he kicks her in the stomach when she closes in. She stumbles back as Rumlow jumps to his feet, but as he moves to lunge for her another shot rings out, and he falls to his knees with a choked cry.

Peggy's head jerks up to see Fury standing several feet ahead of her, one hand still clutching Pierce's arm, the other aiming a smoking gun at where Rumlow's spine had been.

The door leading outside, to the landing pad, wrenches open as Sam bursts into the room, and Pierce takes advantage of the momentary distraction, to try to wrench himself free of Fury's grip and take his gun at the same time. Fury know what Peggy plans to do maybe even before she's thought of it, and he lets Pierce go.

For a strange moment, Peggy thinks she can taste the bullets that first rip through Pierce's hand, and then his chest and finally his temple. She thinks no candy could ever possibly hope to lay so sweetly on her tongue.

"Shit, woman..." Sam mutters, after Pierce's body has crumpled to the floor, his voice loud in the porcelain-thick silence that settles around them.

"Told you I wanted revenge," Peggy says, suddenly blinking rapidly, suddenly choking on her words.

"Charlie lock!" Rhodey's voice, tinny and crackling but loud enough to be heard, over Peggy and Sam's comms.

"Copy that," Sam replies immediately, and presses a button on his wrist. "Cap, what's your status?" Muffled noises greet his question, and then a gunshot and a strangled yell. "Cap! Status!"

"Steve?" Peggy demands, somehow still a force to be reckoned despite the croak in her voice. "What's going on?"

Another eternal handful of seconds and four more gunshots pass over the comms before Steve's voice, a strained groan that sets off warning bells in Peggy's head, finally comes through. "Alpha lock."

"All right, Cap, get out of there," Maria says over all their devices. "Ready to fire."

"Fire now."

"But Steve--"

"Steve, what are you doing?" Peggy yells into her comm.

"Do it! Fire now!"

"Steve!"

"Peggy, he's--" There's another gun shot, and Peggy knows, like a stone dropped into her stomach, who Steve has been fighting in the Alpha carrier. "I haven't, they have to go down first, if he gets to me before--"

From the window overlooking the river, they can see the first helicarrier begin firing on its brothers.

"Oh my _God_ , Steven Rogers," Peggy sobs into her comm, the tears that had been forming at the back of her eyes since Rumlow's taunts finally making their escape down her face. "Don't you do this to me. Don't you dare."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Peggy, I..." The Alpha carrier takes another hit, and Peggy releases a strangled cry. "I'm gonna try, I'm gonna bring him back to you. I'm gonna try, okay? I love you."

"Steve--" She knows him well enough to know when he won't be listening for her voice anymore, so she switches the frequency in her comm. "Rhodey! Rhodey, God damn it, they're still on Alpha carrier, _please_ \--"

"I'll try, I'll do what I can," Rhodey responds. "Just--fuck!" The people manning the missiles on the hangar and the quinjets surrounding the helicarriers haven't abandoned their posts; if anything seeing the helicarriers begin to fall has made them determined to bring War Machine down with them.

"Guys, we gotta go." Sam is at the door, beckoning the others wildly to come to him. "Guys, we gotta go, _now!_ "

"All right! Hang on!" Natasha yelps, her fingers flying over the keyboard as fast as she can make them. Maria bursts in the door, flushed and out of breath from sprinting up three flights of stairs after signing Captain America's death warrant; she dashes towards the Council and herds them towards the door Sam is holding open. Fury strides towards Peggy, and she lets him take her arm and steer her in the same direction as he barks at Natasha to hurry up; Natasha slams the Enter key four times and runs after the rest of the group. Sam had started the helicopter as soon as Rhodey left him on the roof, and he's already taken the pilot's seat as the rest of them file into the belly of the aircraft.

Peggy is the last to get in, and she presses her whole body against the door when it closes and the helicopter starts to lift off, watching from the window as the helicarriers, and her beloveds, destroy each other.

*

Steve catches himself on a support beam one-handed, and makes sure that Sam can see he's safe before he flips himself over and upon it. It's perpendicular to the walkway that leads to the core of the carrier, and he runs as fast as he can around the corner until a gunshot makes him drop to the floor of the walkway, ducked behind his shield.

Bucky stands in front of the core, his face as expressionless as the mask he'd worn yesterday.

"Hydra's gonna kill a lot of people, Buck," Steve says, as calmly as he can. "A lot of civilians. I can't let that happen."

He's greeted with silence. He dares to peek around the edge of the shield, and then has to jerk back when another bullet whizzes by him.

Steve grits his teeth and jumps to his feet as he throws the shield; Bucky knocks it back with his metal arm, and Steve catches it just in time to block two more shots. The third one makes it past, grazing Steve's side, but Bucky is close enough now for Steve to shove him back, hard, with the shield, knocking him off his feet and to the side, opening up a path to the core's chute.

Steve just manages to punch in the passcode when he hears the _shink_ of Bucky drawing a knife; Bucky swings at him, catching the edge of the shield with such force that he spins Steve away from the keypad. Steve rights himself and kicks Bucky away before he can undo the passcode; when Bucky comes back for him he reaches under the shield and catches the knife before it can be plunged into his gut. He grips the knife harder, ignoring the blood pouring out of his palm and fingers, and wrenches it out of Bucky's hand before shoving him back, as far as he can.

"Bravo lock!" Sam announces over the comm

The kill switch server blade is tucked into the inside pocket of the jacket Steve's been wearing since yesterday, and he just manages to retrieve it when Bucky rushes him again. He blocks Bucky's metal fist with the shield and tries to force him back, but Bucky's gotten enough momentum to charge once more and throw both of them over the railing.

The shield and the server blade fly from Steve's hands as he falls, clattering onto the underbelly not far from where the two men hit the glass, and on either side, but the server blade spins further away against the smooth surface. As soon as he lands Steve throws Bucky off of him and clamors after the blade; Bucky reaches for the shield and throws it, knocking Steve over with a hit to the spine. Steve grabs it and blocks three more shots from the gun Bucky pulls out of his thigh holster, but his second attempt to throw it at Bucky ends the same way as the first, only with the shield flying backwards, away from Steve, when it glances off of Bucky's arm. Bucky's gun is apparently spent, as Steve has to block Bucky's second knife with his hands when Bucky lunges at him with it, and he can't before it plunges into the meat of his shoulder.

Steve throws himself forward enough to push Bucky away and yank the knife out of himself. He sees Bucky throw himself to the ground, not towards Steve but towards the server blade, and he tackles him from behind, catching his flesh arm and yanking it up and back, trapped at a painful angle between his hands, as he pins Bucky down with his knees.

"Buck, don't make me do this. _Please_ don't make me do this..."

Bucky tries to flip himself over. Steve redoubles the amount of weight he's putting on Bucky's back, and forces Bucky's elbow out of its socket.

Bucky screams, and Steve nearly does, too.

He doesn't let himself think as he flips both of them over, letting go of Bucky's arm so he can put him in a headlock, praying that he only hangs on long enough to make Bucky pass out. As soon as Bucky's struggles cease Steve lets him go; he nearly sobs in relief to see that Bucky is still breathing as he scrambles for the server blade and then throws himself up into the air, catching another support beam with one hand. He flips himself up onto the beam and leaps from it to the walkway, and bullet suddenly pierces his leg, wrenching a scream out of his mouth and nearly making him botch his landing. He crumples to the floor of the walkway as soon as he lands, and he looks back and down to see Bucky on his feet, his flesh arm hanging uselessly at his side, the metal one holding a smoking gun.

"Charlie lock!" Rhodey announces over the comm, and through the pain Steve's heart drops to hear Rhodey speaking until Sam's voice comes in with "Copy that. Cap, what's your status?"

Steve pulls himself to his feet and rushes forward, towards the core; Bucky fires another shot, and Steve can't dodge the bullet that rips through his stomach and brings him back down to the floor with an agonized cry.

"Cap! Status!"

"Steve?" Peggy's voice chimes in, as Steve crawls forward, the core inches away. "What's going on?"

Bucky keeps firing, but the angle doesn't allow him to get another hit with Steve on his stomach. Steve hears Bucky's gun get shoved back into his holster, and he throws himself at his chance, up at the core, and rips Hydra's server blade out of its spot.

His strength gives out as he slots their own blade into the same place, bringing him back down to his knees.

"Alpha lock."

"All right, Cap, get out of there," Maria responds. "Ready to fire."

Steve can see Bucky's face below him as it transforms from fierce determination to something worse than rage. "Fire now."

"But Steve--"

"Steve, what are you doing?" Peggy yells into her comm; Bucky is making the same leap Steve had made, grabbing the support beam with his metal arm.

"Do it! Fire now!"

"Steve!"

"Peggy, he's--" Steve ducks as Bucky fires at him again from atop the support beam. "I haven't, they have to go down first, if he gets to me before--"

The helicarrier suddenly lurches, slamming Steve's head against the core, throwing Bucky from the beam and back onto the glass.

"Oh my _God_ , Steven Rogers," Peggy sobs, as Steve scrambles on his hands and knees to the edge of the walkway, to see where and how Bucky had landed. "Don't you do this to me. Don't you dare."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Peggy, I..." The helicarrier shakes violently, and Steve hears both Peggy and Bucky scream as the bulk of the walkway collapses, taking out the glass immediately under it and around it; Bucky grabs onto a framing beam before he can fall through, and all the pain in Steve's gut, all the doubt in his mind, disappears. "I'm gonna try, I'm gonna bring him back to you. I'm gonna try, okay? I love you."

He dimly hears her say his name as he crawls to the furthest point around the core, away from the shattered glass, that he can, but her voice is gone when he leaps down onto what he prays stays solid for just another few minutes. The violent trembling of the helicarrier nearly throws his feet out from under him, but he keeps his balance long enough to reach Bucky and drop down to his knees, grabbing his metal wrist with one hand and his flesh shoulder with the other, and he yanks Bucky up as hard as he can, throwing him onto the glass.

"You know me!" Steve yells over the roar of cannon fire, as both of them try to get back onto their feet. Bucky's head snaps up, his eyes as full of fear as they were last night, when Steve called him by his name for the first time since 1945, and Steve can't fight it when Bucky's metal fist comes for his face, knocking him to the right, away from the broken glass.

"No, I don't!" Bucky yells at him, but Steve hears the uncertainty in his voice, and clings to it like a lifeline.

"Your name," Steve pants, dragging himself upright, "is James Buchanan Barnes, and your sister nicknamed you Bucky. You met me, you met _Steve Rogers_ in 1929." Bucky swings wildly, sloppily, at him again; the blow to his face is painful but nowhere near as strong as it could have been. "And you met Peggy Carter in 1943, after Hydra kidnapped you the first time. You called her Red Dress until--"

 _"Shut up!"_ rips out of Bucky's mouth, a terrified shriek; the helicarrier pitches violently, throwing Steve back, and Bucky uses the momentum to rush forward, punching the side of Steve's face and knocking him onto his hands and knees.

"Buck, I'm not gonna fight you," Steve says, turning over so he sits on the glass and looks up at Bucky's face, trying to find a trace of the man who had come to him after Sarah's funeral, offering a new home for now, and promising his devotion forever; the man who had found his rival doubled over in pain as Erskine Beta wreaked another sudden transformation on her body, hid her so she could keep her dignity, and worked her legs and back with his hands until she could stand on her own. "I love you."

He's not prepared for the way Bucky's expression changes, confusion and rage and paranoia and sorrow bleeding from one into the next and then mixing into a sight that he will never forget for as long as he lives; how _"Vse styorli!"_ comes out of his mouth like an argument with himself; how he screams the words again like they're the last lingering threads of his sanity as he lunges forward, grabbing Steve by the shirt collar.

"You're my mission," Bucky growls, throwing Steve down so the back of his head bounces, hard, against a framing beam. _"You're my mission!"_ Bucky screams, punctuating each word with a desperate blow to Steve's face.

"Then finish it," Steve rasps through torn lips, staying Bucky's fist; and he prays that this works, that Peggy can get at least one of them back. "'Cause I'm with you to the end of the line."

He thinks, he desperately hopes, that he sees a flicker of recognition cross Bucky's face, but the glass underneath him shatters as the helicarrier takes another hit, and he's not quite fully aware of anything after that, not even hitting the water.

*

Sharon confirms her safety over the comm as one of the helicarriers collapses on top of the Triskelion; she and most of the surviving technicians had evacuated the building when the first shot between the carriers was fired. The smallest niggling thought of anything but Steve and Bucky thus resolved, Peggy is nearly clawing her way out of the helicopter as it banks around the falling building, to the west of the carriers. She knows that Rhodey has been trying desperately to get to the Alpha carrier as the last automatically deployed missiles and stubborn quinjet pilots mount their final attacks due to Natasha and Sam's running commentary; her eyes, soaked with saltwater but remarkably clear-seeing, are glued on Alpha.

From this angle, at this distance, she can see something small but definitely human-shaped falling from the bottom of the Alpha carrier to the river below, and the entire inside of her torso riots. Almost immediately after, a second body comes tumbling after, and everything inside of her quiets.

She pulls open the helicopter door, deaf to everything but the thought that she can never yell at Steve for jumping out of a plane ever again.

*

The river is fast-running, and turbulent with so much debris now falling into it, and with only one working arm the Soldier James Buchanan Barnes _Bucky_ is struggling to keep his path straight, but Steve who could never be happy without him is floating further away. The helicarrier is unsalvageable and his order to defend it is moot, and now a new order--maybe the first that's ever been imposed on him, maybe one that he imposed on himself--takes its place.

He throws all the power in his legs and hips into propelling himself forward, and he grabs Steve by the back of his shirt just before he can sink out of his reach. He fights the water resistance to throw Steve above his head and then follows him, pushing him further up every time he slows and threatens to descend.

Bucky can hold his breath for twelves minutes underwater, but he gasps for air regardless when he breaks through after nine. He clasps Steve to his side and treads water as they're pushed further downstream, angling them towards the shore; he jostles Steve as they move, seeing water pour out of his mouth from the corner of his eye. At one point he feels Steve's abdomen shudder as breath returns to it; an almost primal sense of relief floods his entire body, and he can't tell if the water dripping down his face is from the river or his own eyes.

They finally, _finally_ make it to shore several hundred feet from the destruction still ongoing behind them, Bucky having to drag Steve's body rather inelegantly as he pads onto semi-dry land. Steve is still barely conscious when Bucky sets him down on the ground, but his body is getting a handle on his breathing by itself, so Bucky has the moment to finally see to his elbow.

He tries to be quiet as he forces it back into place, but he can't help yelling out in pain; Steve's voice, pleading for Bucky to cooperate, to _not make him do this_ , comes back, and a chill that has nothing to do with, but is only exacerbated by, the river water clinging to him takes over his body.

He can't stay with Steve. He is Hydra's asset; Steve is Hydra's enemy. The first order, to protect Steve, can't be carried out if Hydra comes for the Soldier when he's in Steve's company. And they _will_ come for him. They always have; he knows this because...because...

He's about thirty feet away from Steve when he sees someone coming at him at a run. His guns, his knives, have all been lost to the helicarrier and the river, and he's readied himself to fight his bare-fisted way to fulfilling his order when he's finally able to see who it is that's approaching him.

"I'm so sorry about this, darling," says Peggy who wants to help him, Peggy who knows how it feels, in a voice just barely above a whisper.

He sees her fist coming for his face, and he doesn't fight it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 2014 Edward Snowden was already in Russia, hence Natasha's quip.
> 
> "Vse styorli" comes from the t.A.T.u.* song "[Vsya Moya Lyubov (All My Love)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42A9iGN5xY0)", which is a really excellent song for Bucky's mental state during the last bit of TWS. The link has an English translation, but [here](http://lyricstranslate.com/en/vsya-moya-lyubov039-vsya-moya-lyubov-all-my-love.html-0#songtranslation) is another one, and [here](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tatu/vsyamoyalyubov.html) is the original Russian, written in the Latin alphabet. 
> 
> In either translation they render "vse styorli" as "Everything has been erased" (and once, "They erased everything"). Obviously I don't speak/read/understand Russian (google translate wasn't a big help, either) so if one of my readers does and can provide a more accurate rendering, I'd be grateful and would fix immediately. (I'm only referencing the song, so the phrase "vse styorli" can be changed to better serve Russian grammar; I don't care about that.)
> 
> *Yeah, I know. I was an adolescent gay in the early 00s and I'm legally required to still be fond of them despite...everything. VML is a genuinely good song though.


	5. Through Walls and Harvest Moons I Will Fight For You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TW: discussion of/allusion to torture, rape, suicide attempts (starvation, bloodletting, shooting, poisoning, overdosing), and non-consensual medical procedures (surgery, force-feeding, enemas), vomiting, and the Holocaust; lingering effects of psychological torture/gaslighting (amnesia, intrusive thoughts, possibly dissociation?)**
> 
> **Some spoilers for The Wedding of Black Widow and A Single Brighter Light.**  
>     
> Slight crossover into the X-Men and Deadpool universes because unlike Disney/Sony/Fox I don't have to keep the universes apart. I haven't seen Dr. Strange because fuck that whitewashing noise, but I am using the character because he's useful and a known name.
> 
> In 2014 Passover started on the evening of April 14th, and Easter was on the 20th. In this fic's timeline the Triskelion collapsed on Saturday, April 5th.
> 
> I owe some ideas to [idrilka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilka/pseuds/idrilka) (specifically "like tin soldiers") and [Pargoletta](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/pseuds/Pargoletta) (specifically "Fifty-Two Pickup").

**Rhodeybear, Spangles, Captain Greencard, Charlotte**

_WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONES!!!_

*

**5 Missed Calls from Laura**

**3 Missed Calls from Clint**

*

Peggy pounces on Bucky as soon as he hits the ground and pins him there. He isn't giving much of a fight...he isn't giving any fight at all, in fact, but Steve's last report to her was that he hadn't been restored to himself yet and she forces herself to remember that.

First Responder sirens are already filling the air by the time Sam and Natasha take the safer option of rappelling down to the shore from the helicopter. Natasha joins Peggy in holding Bucky down--he gets a feral look in his eye at that, but Peggy's presence seems to keep him mostly compliant--while Sam searches for Steve's pulse and breathing and, after he finds them, rolls Steve into recovery position, rousing him further in the process.

The whir of helicopter blades above them finds further competition in the sound of War Machine descending to the shoreline, and Sam practically has to scream "He needs a hospital!" to be heard.

"I'm calling PCM right now," Rhodey says immediately; he switches the communication setting inside the armor to tune into the hospital's frequency as Sam asks Steve what the year and who the president is. Steve answers correctly, if slowly; Peggy feels relief instantly flood her, and instinctively moves to share it with Bucky, only to be met with a blank look and the stark realization that even without the fear of brain damage, Bucky wouldn't be able to do the same.

"Carter." She looks up to see that Rhodey has set himself behind Bucky's head; he nods at at her, and she and Natasha begin to relieve the pressure they have on Bucky, while pulling him up at the same time. Rhodey grabs his arms as soon as they're within reach, twisting them around each other and pinning them to his back as soon as he's sitting up.

"Peg, he's..." Sam catches Steve by the shoulder and hip, preventing him from moving. "He might..."

Peggy feels a weight in her stomach and shoulders as she looks Bucky full in the face and searches for any sign of recognition; he's avoiding eye contact but still declining to struggle. "Bucky," she forces herself to say calmly, evenly, "do you know who I am?"

"You're Peggy," he replies, and she wants to cry out of relief and also because he speaks like a soldier giving a report; flat, reciting. "I called you Red Dress until..."

She ducks her head, forcing herself into his line of sight. "Until when?"

He finally makes eye contact, having figured out that she wants it from him. "Until..." Something like anguish passes over his face as his gaze flicks from her eyes to her lips to the ponytail trailing haphazardly over her shoulder. A pair of phantom hands, small and dirt-lined, ghosts over Peggy's hair in play, and "Rosemarie," drops out of his mouth like an apple falling from a tree.

Peggy nearly chokes on the breath she'd been taking, and the jolt to her system pushes a few tears out of her eyes. His hands are trapped behind his back so she grabs and squeezes his knees instead. "Yes. Yes, dear God. Rosemarie. What else? Do you remember anything else?"

He desperately wants to answer her, she can tell, but the struggle to recall on Bucky's face washes out under the influence of sudden, intense fear. "No." His head starts to shake, almost convulsively, and his gaze goes sideways. "No. Vse styorli. It's not real. Eto nikogda ne proiskhodilo."

"He said it never happened," Natasha translates through her grimace.

" _No_ , Bucky, no, listen to me." She grabs his chin, forcing him to make eye contact again. "It happened, I promise you it happened. She's, Rosemarie is real. I'm real. I'm Peggy, and that's Steve. We're real. You remember us."

He doesn't argue with her. She prays that this is agreement, not an acquiescence.

*

** _SHIELD HQ COLLAPSES; SECRETS SPILL_**  
BREAKING: _Thousands of classified files leaked onto the Internet as the Triskelion is destroyed in multiple helicarrier crash ___

*

News that half the Avengers had been part of _whatever the hell just happened_ at the Triskelion is already circulating by the time the ambulance makes it to them, but enough professionalism and a healthy fear of War Machine, not to mention the Black Widow and Agent Carter, carries the EMTs through administering aid to Steve without any medically unnecessary questions.

Bucky finally starts to struggle when Steve is loaded into the ambulance, forcing Rhodey to push him forward, facefirst into the mud. Peggy had gone to assist the EMTs with Steve's medical history, and she rushes back once the movement catches her eye, dropping to her knees next to him and grabbing his shoulders.

"Steve is safe, darling. I promise you, he's not in any danger with them. They're just taking him to the hospital, to make sure he'll be all right. Please don't--" In the ambulance someone straps an oxygen mask to Steve's face, and Peggy pushes Bucky back down as he tries to pull himself upright. "Don't fight us. Don't move. Steve is fine. They're just giving him oxygen, so he can breathe."

"Needs his Grimault's," Bucky murmurs into the ground, and the brand name surfaces dimly in Peggy's memory, along with a tiny spark of elation. "'F'he can't breathe..."

"He'll get them," Peggy promises in a rush, choosing not to try to convince him of the existence of better breathing treatments available now. "The hospital will make sure."

"You cooperate, you'll get to make sure of it yourself," Rhodey mutters, and even with his gaze glued on Steve Bucky's peripheral vision picks up the car, obviously armored to the trained eye, coming around the side of the ambulance.

"I'll go with Steve," Sam calls over to Peggy. "So you can stay with your...you can stay with him."

"Thank you," Peggy breathes in his direction more than properly says, steeling herself as military personnel begin filing out of the car. Rhodey murmurs a grim apology to her, which she accepts with the briefest of nods; she had expected Rhodey to call for a protective detail. Steve tries to sit up on the gurney as several highly armed men come into his view; Sam begins trying to talk Steve down as the ambulance doors close and the sirens turn on.

"They stay together!" Rhodey yells over the noise of several guns becoming trained on the Soldier as their handlers fan out in a circle around them, jerking his chin up to indicate Peggy. "Agent Carter is the only thing keeping him calm right now," Rhodey continues, loud but even-toned, commanding. "You split them up, you're not gonna like what happens, trust me."

The soldiers stall for a moment, waiting to see if Rhodey's statement would prove false; Peggy gently sets both her hands on the back of Bucky's head, staring at who seems to be the leader of this squadron with a look that's equally pleading and fierce. It seems to take ages for the leader to try to parse which of the three is going to cause the most trouble, decide it ultimately doesn't matter, and gesture his men to advance slowly, non-aggressively, like Animal Control approaching a stray dog.

Rhodey pulls Bucky back up slowly so Peggy has enough time to keep her hands on some part of his body. She keeps her gaze ramrod straight, unwavering; her mouth moves, letting reassurance that he'll get to see Steve if he doesn't fight anyone, if he continues to cooperate, spill out in a steady, babbling stream of words.

When the observation comes that Bucky looks a little too used to being handcuffed and manhandled she shoves it away, in favor of the thought that he trusts her, and on keeping a vice grip on his right arm and a venomous glare on whoever jostles them enough to threaten her hold as they are stumbled towards the armored car.

*

**Natasha GOmanOFF** @ineedmoresynaesthetic  
TYSM for all the pm's you guys. We have been evacuated but I am totally fine #Triskelion #wtfishappening

*

If they had been planning to take Bucky somewhere besides Phillip Coulson Memorial Medical Center, Peggy's presence, as well as Rhodey flying above the car with Natasha clutched in his arms, and the helicopter hovering even higher over them, prevents them from doing so.

PCM, as it is more commonly referred to, has sister campuses in New York and in California, and each are designed for "the proper care and handling of superheroes" as Tony so amusedly put it, when he got the news of their inception. Post-Battle of Manhattan it became obvious that treating anyone involved in "enhanced warfare" would require specialized equipment and staff, as well as tougher security. The repaired, and now reinforced, cell originally meant to contain the Hulk was given to the DC hospital on account of it being the first building to start construction, and it's here that Bucky is immediately herded.

Peggy remains with him, by now the entirety of her body trembling, and she has to stop herself from single-handedly destroying the security staff as they shackle Bucky to the bed. Someone tries to hustle her bodily from the room, and he almost loses a testicle for it before Peggy reminds herself that causing a scene will get her removed from, and/or upset, Bucky. Nurses and a physician bustle in as soon as Security backs away; Peggy positions herself near Bucky's head so as to not be in their way as they take his vitals, and from this new vantage point she can see Sam, Natasha by his side having evidently gone to fetch him, waving at her from the other side of the transparent wall. She gestures for them to come in; Sam points to the men guarding the entryway.

Bucky's mouth is occupied by a thermometer when she looks down at him. Rumlow's voice dances in her head, and she has to keep her wish that Brock had died slower out of her voice when she speaks. "I'm going to step outside of the room just for a minute or two, all right? My friend has news, about Steve."

She gets a little flicker of... _something_ at Steve's name; he doesn't nod or try to speak, but as she slowly backs away from the bed he doesn't start to struggle either, so her last few steps are quick ones.

"They took Steve for a CT scan of his head," Sam reports without preamble, to Peggy's gratitude. "To see if he's got a concussion or..." _anything worse_ hangs in the air, "and then he's gonna go to x-ray. He took a couple GSWs; they were already closed up by the time we got here but the doctor wants to make sure there aren't any bullet fragments left behind. They're gonna x-ray his lungs, too; to see if there's water damage."

"Okay," Peggy says a little breathily. "Thank you." Her gaze falls to the side of Sam's leg; peeking out from his ripped pants is the sight of dried blood. "Oh, Sam..."

"Just a graze," Sam says, putting up his hands.

"I'll make him get checked out," Natasha says, wrapping her hands around Sam's upper arm.

"Are you hurt, Nat? At all?" Peggy asks, cutting into Sam's scoff.

Natasha shakes her head. "All green. I'll check in with everyone else, too, don't worry about it. You stay with him."

"Steve mentioned," Sam says, before Natasha can start pulling him away, "Steve said in the ambulance that his, that Bucky's arm took some damage. The right one, at the elbow. It got popped out during the fight. You might wanna tell 'em to check that out."

"Thank you. I will. Thank you."

"We'll come tell you when they're done with Steve's tests," Natasha says, and tugs Sam away before Peggy can trip over thanking her, as well, letting her take shaking, hurried steps back to Bucky's side.

"His arm was injured," Peggy says, interrupting the nurses' conversation. "The right elbow was dislocated earlier."

"All right, I'll order an x-ray, check for any damage," the physician replies, businesslike. "Ma'am, do you have any clue about the other arm? This metal one?"

"I...no, I haven't the foggiest..." She sets her hands on the bed railing and catches Bucky's gaze. "Bucky, darling, what do you know about this arm?"

"Titanium build," Bucky answers like before, even and passionless, and oh Jesus no does he think that she's one of his handlers? Can he conceive of her as anything else? "Capable of lifting approximately 140 kilograms of weight. Inner arm holds one [Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbairn%E2%80%93Sykes_fighting_knife), currently lost. Interior chamber holds one tracking device connected to the personal phone of Alexander Pierce, as well as one cylinder each of [3-quinuclidinyl benzilate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-Quinuclidinyl_benzilate), [halothane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halothane), [phenacyl chloride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenacyl_chloride), [sulfur mustard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_mustard), [phosgene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene), and [chlorine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine)."

"Oh my God," one of the nurses whispers, her face draining of color.

"We have to get this thing the hell off him," the physician murmurs through gritted teeth. "Page Dr. Strange," she orders one of the nurses, who immediately leaves the room. "Do you know of any allergies?" she directs at Peggy and Bucky.

"None," Bucky says listlessly at the same time Peggy says it urgently.

"Blood type?"

"It's B Positive," Peggy answers, remembering a conflation of the times when she'd fiddled with his dog tags while he slept.

"Any prior surgeries? Besides the arm?"

Bucky opens his mouth, but makes a faltering noise instead of a proper reply. He thinks he can remember his head hurting after being cut open, once. "Brain. Unsure."

"For what?"

"Unknown." His face screws up in some kind of pain. "Vse styorli."

"I don't know of any other prior surgeries," Peggy says, when the medical team looks to her. Steve had never mentioned any from their youth. "He might, he might have a cyanide pill in his mouth. A false tooth."

"We'll have to x-ray his whole head, God damn," the physician mutters. "And his spine, gotta see how this thing is anchored. Call Radiology, get a mobile in here stat," she orders another nurse, who scurries off. "All right, sir. You understand, right? That this arm is an extremely dangerous weapon and it has to be removed immediately?"

"It's all right that they take it, darling?" Peggy asks.

He opens his mouth, but clearly doesn't know how to answer her.

"Sir?" the physician tries again.

"Bucky, is it all right?"

"Ya gotov vypolnit'," Bucky murmurs, apparently deciding this is the response he can provide closest to the response they want.

"He's altered," the physician decides. "Ma'am, are you his next of kin?"

"Y-yes, yes, my husband and I both are."

"You give consent for us to remove the arm?"

"You're going to do it no matter what, aren't you?" Peggy snaps.

"Less documentation this way," the physician levels with her.

Peggy bites back an acrid remark and looks at Bucky's face. The utterly dispassionate blankness staring back at her, she realizes, is the closest he can come to giving consent right now.

"Fine. Do it. I give you permission to take the arm off of him." A little surge of boiling hot rage rushes from her chest up into her throat, and it's a wonder the doctor's face isn't scalded when she speaks. "He didn't want the damn thing in the first place."

Bucky turns his head to look at her.

"You didn't," she tells him firmly, and can't decide whether or not she wants him to believe her.

*

**Tony**

_I am so sorry for the radio silence man. We're all alive and at PCM in DC. I'll explain everything when you get here_

*

"[I! Am! Your singing telegram!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui337e5D50E)" Natasha lilts; Steve doesn't get the reference but he attempts a little smile anyway. The bones in his face are already healing, but slowly, so it comes out just as painful as it feels, and is half-hidden under his breathing mask anyway.

"Okay, so Sam's in x-ray now for a GSW to his leg," Natasha continues, settling down in the visitor's chair near his bed. "They don't think there's anything to worry about, but they're being safe." Steve shakes his head in a vaguely vertical manner. "I called Sharon; she got an arm lac but not a bad one. She wrapped it herself and went back to Sam's house to check on your brother-in-law. He's fine; he didn't wake up the whole time we were gone." Sam had had a mild sedative--"My nerves can get bad sometimes, not gonna lie"--that they plied the elderly man with just before leaving. "Ah...Rhodey's got a bunch of scrapes and bruises but is otherwise none the worse for wear. Hill is okay, Fury refused to be seen. They left; they're planning to hit up the safehouses around here to see if they can find any more information, maybe take out a few more Hydra agents that're in hiding. As for your two thirds..."

Steve tries to sit up further but only manages to shuffle.

"Peggy is completely fine. She's staying with Bucky in Containment for now; they brought a mobile in to x-ray his head and spine." Steve breathes hard, to ask why. "Well." Natasha slides her hands down her thighs and grips her knees. "They needed to see how his arm is anchored to his body, so they can remove it safely. It's being considered a weapon." Steve makes the same noise, and Natasha the same gesture. "Hydra put poisonous gases in his arm. If any of them leak, or if he loses control..."

Steve's eyes squint shut and his hands curl into fists at his sides as he tries to keep his own control. "Why the head?" he grunts almost indecipherably to her.

Natasha considers her answer for a moment before modulating her voice to be as calm as possible. "Bucky...vaguely recalled having brain surgery, but not what for. So they took x-rays to see what was there. They found..." she takes half a second to steel herself. "They found metal plates in his head."

She's not quite prepared for the noise Steve makes, despite having heard the same one come from Laura more than a few times.

"Most likely for conducting electricity," she continues steadily. "Probably to inhibit or enhance certain brain functions. I would assume that these are what they used to make him forget himself. Among other things."

Steve is really too weak to thrash, but his body moves of its own accord regardless; the bed shakes violently underneath him, rattling the monitor and IV pole attached to him by wires. Natasha rises and goes to him quickly, setting her hands carefully but firmly on his shoulders and looking him square in the face.

"Schmidt is dead. Zola is dead. Pierce is dead, and so is Rumlow, and many more Hydra agents. There is no one you can avenge him on right now. And Peggy will murder me if I let you get out of this bed, so I need you to stay where you are and rest." She grabs his hand before he can pull off his mask and pins it beside his head. "Bucky is safe now. But there's gonna be a long road to recovery with him, so _you_ need to get better as soon as possible. It's the best thing you can do for him. It's the _only_ thing you can do for him, at the moment."

He's still but tense under her hands, a coil ready to spring, and she's taken aback to see fear in his eyes when he finally meets her gaze.

"You don't have to worry about people thinking he's Hydra," she continues; she reaches back with her leg, hooking her foot around the chair leg, and brings her seat back to her. "I already told this to Peggy. When I was releasing SHIELD's files, I searched for info on the Winter Soldier project first. I wanted to make sure that information got released, in case we ran out of time and I couldn't get everything." His brow knits at her, and she gives him a smile. "I told you I'd do what I could to help you get him back. Clearing his name seems like an essential part of the process."

Steve's chest squeezes, forcing out a heavy, shuddering breath that sounds like "Thank you" over the rush of albuterol.

"Well." Her hand slips down his arm and into his, and she affords it a squeeze that lightens but doesn't let go. "What are friends for?"

*

**stoptellingevery1imdead**  
tfw you realize Stern tried to take the Iron Man armor from Tony Stark back in 2010  
#senator stern #hydragate #shield is hydra #good call tony  
83 notes

*

**Amorosa** @a_RADical  
"Oh wow the governor of Illinois is secretly Hydra I'm so shocked," said no one #hydragate

*

Sam's bullet wound does indeed turn out to be superficial, yielding no especial concern for lead poisoning. Steve's GSWs, while decidedly more profound, seem to be clean of bullet fragments as well.

Peggy finds this out when she comes to see Steve, after the torturous process of anesthetizing Bucky goes on for what seems like an eternity. The information circulating outside hasn't yet penetrated the medical center, and Bucky doesn't know what it takes to knock him out; Dr. Strange argues with the anesthesiologist and with Peggy for a good while before finally agreeing to use magic.

("Even white magic is unimaginably complex," he tries to explain to Peggy over her rising fury. "I realize this will sound absurd, but something as simple as putting him under could have devastating effects in the long run."

"I think he's been as devastated as he possibly can be," Peggy snaps back. "Unless it's going to kill him, do it. Get this bloody horror show over with.")

"So he's in surgery now," Peggy reports to the room; Sam hasn't quite been discharged but has been allowed to sit in with Steve and Natasha instead of staying in his own room. "It'll be a bit."

"Well, not like you're going anywhere," Natasha offers. Peggy sits delicately at the foot of Steve's bed; he moves his feet despite the fact that she has enough room. "Is it just the arm they're doing?"

"Yes. They're not going to...not going to operate on his head at this point." She sets her hand on Steve's ankle, watching him; he shuts his eyes and turns his head away, obviously restraining himself. "The plates aren't...weaponized, by themselves, they don't think, not like the arm. No need to put him through that...that sort of trauma, just yet." She shifts, and resettles, squeezing Steve's foot.

"How's he been, behavior-wise?" Sam asks.

"Totally compliant," Peggy replies. "Almost...unnervingly so."

"Well, you did tell him that if he cooperated, he'd get to see Steve," Natasha muses. "So it's probably a good thing that he's not fighting. It'll make things easier for him in the long run, too."

Peggy hums in response, moves to speak, hesitates, and then presses on. "Natasha, what...what did he say on the shore, before he said that it, it never happened? He said something else..."

Natasha sighs, sitting back in her chair. "He said "vse styorli"." Steve makes a noise and limply waves his hand to indicate that Bucky had said the same to him. "Loosely translated, it means "everything has been erased"."

"Oh my God..."

"Clearly it wasn't, though," Sam interrupts, calling their attention. "If...if he associates that phrase with you two, then that means you've got at least some sort of presence in his mind. He might not, not really _remember_ who you are to him, in a meaningful sense. But he does at least _know_ you. Otherwise he wouldn't have cooperated with you."

"Why would he associate those words with us..." Peggy murmurs, and Sam and Natasha keep their own counsel. Steve bunches the bed sheet in his hands and tries not to rip it.

"Who was the girl?" Natasha asks, after a moment. "Rosemarie, I think it was?"

"Oh, she..." Peggy's hands press hard against her lap. "Back in...it was '43, in January I think. January or February. We were in Germany, moving between bases, and there was a raid. Phillips ordered us all to scatter, and we--Bucky and I--were separated from everyone else; we were chased into some of the surrounding woods. Of course, we managed to pick off our pursuers," she allows herself a small, proud smile, "but we had been pushed several miles away from where we started. And while we were finding our way back through the woods, we came across a young girl."

"Rosemarie, I take it," Sam says. 

"Well, she _said_ her name was Rosemarie Handel." She gives a strangled almost-laugh. "Funny thing, that wasn't her name at all. It was Elizabeth Schneider. Her family had left her in hiding while they tried to flee the SS. So she was using a fake name, to protect herself." She glances at the door. "I didn't want to try to explain that to him right then, at the river. Didn't want to confuse him..."

"Probably wise."

"What happened with Rosemarie?" Natasha asks. 

"Well we couldn't...we couldn't just leave her in the forest. She was a child. She was holding a teddy bear, for God's sake. We had to get to the new SSR camp, so we thought we'd find a town to leave her in on the way there, you know, put her in the direction of a police station and take off before we blew our cover. So we posed as a family, the three of us. Traveling to live with relatives after our home was bombed out. I speak enough German, and Bucky pretended to've...gotten a bit addled, due to the bombs." Her smile is raw but somehow bright. "After we found out she was actually Elizabeth, we took her to base with us. Phillips finagled getting her out of Germany with some wounded men getting shipped home. She moved to LA after the war."

"Is she still...?"

"She passed. In '03. Complications following a stroke."

"I'm sorry," Sam says, and Natasha makes a sympathetic noise.

"I'm not looking forward to him finding out," Peggy says, again looking at the door. "He was very attached to her. You would've thought he _was_ her father." She pauses, smoothing out a wrinkle in her pants, and then again and again. "That was...we had already decided by then that, that he and I would...share Steve." She settles her hand on where she reasons out that Steve's knee is; he moves his leg in lieu of squeezing her hand. "But _we_ weren't...pretending to be husband and wife was what put the idea in our heads, that we were more compatible than originally thought."

"And it just blossomed from there," Natasha supplies.

Peggy nods. "Bucky is...he's very easy to love." She swipes at her eyes almost before the tears start coming. "Easier than either of us, I think," she adds, running her hand up and down Steve's shin; he makes a noise of amused agreement.

"So, he has more than one association with you," Sam points out. "Specifically, what brought you two together. That's, again, probably a good sign."

"Knock knock." The room turns its collective head to the doorway, where Rhodey is standing. "Just wanted to let y'all know that Tony and Pepper are on their way. They're driving; all flights have been grounded and Tony's not risking getting shot down."

"Oh, yeah," Sam murmurs, standing. "I should probably call my brother and sister, let them know I'm okay, yeah? Sounds like a good idea. Be right back."

"Did you call Clint yet?" Peggy directs at Natasha, as Sam breezes out the door.

"I did, when you were in x-ray," Natasha says, nodding at Steve. Laura had been nearly hysterical on the phone; Clint had been calmer, accepting of the reasons why he hadn't been called but obviously still upset over the circumstances. "Surprisingly okay with suddenly losing their only source of income. He and Laura were gonna try to find a way to fly out, but I told them to stay home. I'll be to them once things settle here."

"Laura...?"

"Clint's wife," Natasha says, bluntly, and as she watches the others try to process the information she continues. "When I was first brought into SHIELD, Clint took me home with him like the meanest stray puppy, and Laura took care of me. We...hit it off, the three of us. Clint and I decided not to mention them to you guys for their protection."

"Them?" Steve coughs into his mask.

"They have children," Natasha says, with a faint smile at the thought of the kids. "Cooper and Lila. Adopted out of foster care right before the thing with Loki went down."

"They said it was okay for you to tell us about them?" Peggy asks.

Natasha bobs her head. "I told them...there's only a handful of us now. We who remain have to be able to trust each other. With our lives."

She doesn't smile, exactly, but the wryness of it comes through.

"We'll keep it here, until you tell us it's okay to discuss it," Peggy promises, and Steve nods.

"So, like...are triads like the new in-thing and I missed it somehow?" Rhodey asks, after Natasha nods again, accepting the slight dig as completely earned. "Should I be, uh, talking to Tony and Pepper, or...?"

"Come now, Rhodes," Natasha says, wrinkling her nose. "You deserve so much better than Tony."

Rhodey lets out an actual guffaw, and Steve's mask makes a slightly frightening noise as he laughs into it.

*

**Brianna Quille** posted a **link**  
This is fucking terrifying. There is at least one from every country. AT LEAST ONE. FROM EVERY. COUNTRY.

United Nations in turmoil as leaked SHIELD files expose...  
dailybugle.com  
**Usagi Himura, Kitty DiCaprio, Gina Sinclair** and **6 others** liked this

*

They turn on the television to get a better idea of what's going on in the outside world. The first image greeting them is footage of the Triskelion wreckage, which quickly cuts to an interview with a SHIELD agent, an actual one, who quotes part of Steve's speech and then begins recounting the shootout that followed. The newscaster announces that no one knows how many people died in the building, and Natasha has to observe aloud that probably all true SHIELD agents would have been killed had the carriers not fallen for their collective sanity's sake.

A flip to another channel reveals the chaos that's taking over the rest of the world. Steve had been right in last night's assessment that attempting to get outside help would have been too risky; alleged Hydra agents have been exposed in every branch of government and military and law enforcement, in every major industry, in nearly every country across the globe. In the hours since the leak occurred marches, protests, and riots have started in nearly every major city; mutinies have been committed at a number of military bases and encampments; a handful of presidents and prime ministers have already gone into hiding, and one has been assassinated. Rhodey puts his head in his hands when a close colleague is named as the Hydra equivalent of middle-management ("If there'd been anyone I would've turned to for help with this, it would've been him"); Sam mutters "Damn, Ellis just can't catch a break, can he?" when it's announced that the new Vice-President has been arrested. Avengers Tower has gone into lockdown mode--JARVIS had been set to initiate it upon any disturbance from the air, even a run-of-the-mill plane crash--and they try not to think about the same bloodbath that had happened at the Triskelion potentially taking place in the Tower.

"Wars are going to start over this," Peggy murmurs at one point.

"Wars are going to end over it, too," Natasha counters.

As the hours pass some of the news channels begin focusing more on the other contents of the leaked information than the newly exposed agents. It's no surprise to anyone that several of the desaparecidos in Argentina and Chile had been taken by Hydra, and that they had orchestrated the latest civil war in Sokovia. The existence of Erskine Renaissance is also not very surprising, though the circumstances surrounding the project are a bit shocking.

"The files reveal that several blood samples were taken from Steve Rogers after the shooting death of Dr. Erskine in 1942," the news anchor reports to a tensely silent room. "The goal? To create _more_ supersoldiers, by reverse-engineering the famed serum that created Captain America. Documentation covering the 1940s through the 80s reveal multiple attempts at recreation, all of which failed, resulting in the deaths of their test subjects. A possibly viable recreation was accomplished in 1991 by the late Howard Stark, whose untimely death in December of the same year was ruled the result of a car accident. In light of these recent developments, the cause of death may need to be revisited..."

*

"...chaos erupted today at Phillip Coulson Memorial Medical Center in Washington DC, where it's been discovered the Winter Soldier, a genetically engineered superhuman created by the Aryan supremacist organization Hydra, is being treated for injuries sustained during yesterday's coup at the Triskelion. Tony Stark, better known as the superhero Iron Man, attempted to attack the Winter Soldier after files leaked from the former SHIELD headquarters revealed that the Soldier carried out the murders of Stark's parents..."

*

**shes-a-rebel-shes-a-rsi**  
Prayer circle that the Avengers don't break up over this.  
#i mean tony has every right to be upset #those are his PARENTS #but it reads like bucky didn't have a choice #like literally didn't know any better #literally couldn't refuse #idek #this is so shitty #hydragate #shield is hydra #winter soldier files  
123 notes

*

After Rhodey drags Tony out of the window that he had broken calling his armor pieces to him, presumably planning to struggle their way to his office or all the way to New York if that's what it took to calm Tony down, Containment sees an increase in security. Steve is steadily getting better, any fear of pneumonia dwindling by the hour, and Peggy's heart doesn't feel quite as divided as it might have when she goes to sit by Bucky's bedside instead of her husband's.

The FBI comes, followed closely by the CIA, now that they seem to have flushed out the smattering of Hydra agents in their midst; they quibble between themselves over who exactly has jurisdiction over Bucky while Peggy visibly fumes and Steve asks Sam to look up someone named Bernie Rosenthal ("She's a human rights lawyer. I know her from shul; I think she likes me well enough...") Bucky is recovering from surgery rather smoothly, already awake and still not fighting against his restraints. Peggy's presence aids him in answering his investigators' questions, as far as he's able, and Dr. Strange insists to them that Bucky should be left here to complete recovery under the secure conditions already in place.

"What're we gonna do if they don't...if they don't understand?" ghosts out of Peggy's mouth, after they convince the Feds that transporting Bucky is an unnecessary risk, and Peggy rushes back to Steve's room to update him on the situation. "Thor's not in Asgard; I think we'd need him to let us in."

Steve inhales deeply, settling further back into the bed. "Well. We like the Thai food from that place around the corner. Might be nice to try the real thing."

Peggy snorts.

"Amsterdam was okay when we were there, too. We could lay low in Holland for awhile."

"Wakanda's rather isolated. Not part of the UN, so probably not infested with Hydra."

"They don't let anybody in," Steve laughs, and Peggy noises at him. "In any case, Pegs, if I'm not better by the time they come for him..."

"I will carry both of you out of here if I have to," Peggy cuts in firmly.

Steve doesn't argue. He knows she understands.

*

**hawaiifive-no**  
ok so I made the mistake of looking at the Daily Bugle's summary of the Winter Solider files and now I can't stop shaking. Just...how? How can somebody do ANY of that to another human being? How can you live with yourself afterwards?  
**agentmaggierogers**  
I tried to read the actual files which was A Mistake. I only made it to the part when Hydra told him about the Valkyrie crash. I got maybe thirty seconds into the audio file and then I started crying so bad that I had to stop. When he realizes that CapCarter are gone and no one's coming for him...  
**hawaiifive-no**  
can you imagine what it's like to be CapCarter right now? We're talking about their best friend/probably boyfriend. You KNOW they're gonna force themselves to look at all of it, and it's going to kill them.  
**agentmaggierogers**  
oh god don't remind me. i can't even think about it without getting upset.  
5 notes

*

"You'll be happy to know that #FreeBucky is trending," Natasha reports. She's been in and out of the hospital bearing whatever news she's been asked to deliver, evading the paparazzi surrounding PCM's perimeter with minimal sweat but maximum annoyance. "Number One topic on Twitter, actually. Even more than the general tags for this whole mess."

"Speak English, Nat," Steve implores. 

"Bucky has a lot of popular support," Natasha says, rolling her eyes and making it sound extra laborious for her to explain. "Probably millions of people have read his files. Millions of people know the Winter Soldier wasn't...something he actively wanted to be. You're welcome."

"Well, I guess there's only so many times you can read "subject attempts suicide" before you get it."

Natasha sits in the chair next to Steve. Peggy's gone back to Containment; Steve sent her there after they had to stop reading Bucky's files before they threw the tablet Sam had brought them from his house out the window. 

"That's what did him in," Steve says quietly, after Natasha doesn't speak. "He...have you read them all, yet?"

Natasha bobs her head. "Yeah. I saw. The cyanide." 

Steve can picture it, Bucky's last desperate attempt--and he had tried everything; refusing to eat and, when they forcefed him, attempting to not void (Hydra put a stop to that in the most humiliating way possible); scraping his wrists open with his nails or shackles; biting his tongue--waiting like a spider on a fly for his guard to come close enough to his cell for him to grab and hold and suffocate. The man's gun falling to the floor and spinning out of his reach during the struggle, leaving only the cyanide pill Bucky had to dig out of his mouth as a means of escape. His enhanced body surviving but not working fast enough to prevent deoxygenation and the consequent brain damage. Hydra immediately shoving him in cold storage in a bid to save their lab rat once they found him twitching violently on the floor. 

He'd been left there for awhile. Cryotechnology was in its infant stages, and if Subject had just destroyed his grey matter, he could at least be used to test how long Hydra could keep a person alive on ice.

He surpassed their expectations, and then surpassed the new ones. And when he was finally taken out, confused and amnesiac and oh so ripe for manipulation, he exceeded them beyond Zola's initial wildest dreams.

"Hill and Fury found a few more Hydra agents in hiding," Natasha says. "They're gonna...they're gonna try to get permission from Congress to keep the Avengers going as a specifically anti-Hydra group, even with SHIELD proper gone. Once the UN sorts itself out we should probably try to arrange it so we can pursue Hydra internationally."

Steve noises vaguely at her.

"I mean, I know that you're gonna go wherever you need to, but the rest of us wanna make sure we don't cause trouble sometime down the road."

"Tony--"

"Tony'll come around."

Steve nods, dumbly, and then makes himself turn his head and smile gratefully at her. She holds the gaze with a light touch, letting it crumple as the seconds pass.

"He didn't want to do it, Nat," comes out in a wet rasp that's as painful to listen to as it is to speak through. "He tried so hard not to, not to let them..."

"We all do," Natasha says, delicate as air, and she sinks back in her seat, her arms folding tightly across her chest as she starts to regret telling Clint and Laura to stay home. "You're going to be on suicide watch," she says, after a long moment of listening to Steve try to control his breathing. "Childproof your place. It won't physically stop him from doing anything but it'll let him know you care. If he has meds you're going to need to watch them like a hawk. You might want to keep them on you at all times, rather thank risk it."

"Okay," Steve breathes, as his abdomen shudders.

"He'll have difficulties falling asleep, and some nights--a lot of nights--he'll wake up screaming. He might not want to eat; you're gonna have to make him. He'll get lost in his own head when all of you least expect it. If you're smart, you'll get him a trauma therapist. If you're even smarter, you'll get one for yourself and Peggy, too. They'll teach you how to deal."

Steve nods mutely again.

"Give him something to be responsible for. A pet or something. He'll need a reason to stick around. For me it was...it'll be a little different than it was with me," she admits. "I had to learn to trust them. Bucky, at least, already trusts Peggy. And probably you. It's a small blessing but be grateful for it."

"I am."

"Bring him out to the farm sometime." A small but genuine smile graces her mouth. "It's a good place. You feel better when you're there."

"You're at liberty to extend that invitation?" Steve asks, with just enough humor to make its presence known.

"Well, yeah. It _is_ my home, after all," Natasha promises, and Steve is pulled from the water for a second time in as many days.

*

**Care2 Petitions**

**Don't imprison Bucky Barnes!**  
38,293 SUPPORTERS________40,000 GOAL

*

**WE** _the_  
**PEOPLE**  
YOUR **VOICE** IN THE WHITE HOUSE

WE THE PEOPLE ASK THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

**PRE-EMPTIVELY PARDON SGT. JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES FOR CRIMES COMMITTED WHILE UNDER HYDRA'S CONTROL**

****

****Created by W.L.K. on April 6, 2014** **

****

95,732 SIGNED________100,000 GOAL

*

Bucky remembers, when the men in black tactical gear shove him and Peggy into the armored car, that he enlisted in 1940, because he had to be ready when the war finally came. 

When the hospital staff is busy strapping him down to the bed he remembers that he once botched a shot because a little girl got in the way, and after he was extracted his handler boiled a pot of water and dumped it over his hands.

When Peggy tells the doctor his blood type he can hear himself saying "I'm invisible" and knows that it was code, that it meant a different kind of jealousy than his past-self wanted anyone within earshot to infer.

When the mobile x-ray comes he starts shaking, because he doesn't remember the last time he daydreamed this much but he feels in his bones a cold several weeks strapped to a bed with a similar machine looming over him. He knows they're going to put him in the electric chair, and he can lose everything else if they need him to but the people who held him in the canyon under the stars are real and he has to hang onto them.

They don't wipe him, at least not right then. Peggy promises that she'll be there when he wakes up from surgery, and that he'll get to see Steve soon after, and these things keep him from lashing out when they wheel him into the OR. Dr. Strange chanting over him nearly sends him into a panic--someone else did that to him once, someone smaller and with a crueler smile--but he's unconscious before he can seriously try to fight or flee.

When he wakes up he wants to reach up with the metal arm, to catch the person standing over him by the throat. But only his shoulder twitches when he tries to, and the scientist with a clipboard dissolves into purposely brisk RN retaking his vital signs. Peggy's voice floats in from behind him, shushing him, reassuring him, and he realizes that he's been calling her name and Steve's since the moment he opened his eyes.

When the man in red and gold armor comes dangerously close to breaking down the walls of Containment, his helmet retracted as he screams at Peggy and the redhead and the man in silver, Bucky thinks he's seen his face before.

With Peggy's encouragement he gives everything he can to the people in suits who ask him questions. It's not much, but with Steve far away from him this is the only way he can protect him from Hydra for now. He thinks that he wanted to go somewhere with Steve and Peggy once, to keep them safe, but when he tries to think of the name of the place he can only think of snow, which makes him clam up and almost not answer the last few questions posed to him.

He tries not to dream anymore after that, but to no avail; the images come unbidden in fits and snatches as the hours pass, whether he tries to sleep or stares at the ceiling. He sees a teenage girl with braided dark brown hair; a cat with its whiskers cut off; a campfire surrounded by laughing men whose faces are half-shrouded in shadow. He hears a woman singing prettily in Scottish Gaelic; explosions muffled by darkness; his own thoughts deciding that he doesn't dare try on the lipstick. Peggy comes back into his room, her hands smelling like Steve, and he remembers lying on the floor and studying a sleeping boy's face like it was a masterpiece hung on the wall of a museum. In his head he cries over letters that his mind's eye can't read, the ink of them fading the harder he tries to make them out. Constructed lines that must have come from books and movies flit through his brain without a home to go to. A man talks to him about freedom and justice; his face transforms and though the words remain the same Bucky grows smaller under them. When he kills someone he doesn't know which man he does it for.

They don't mean anything in particular as they bounce in and out of his focus. He doesn't know anything about his dreams except that he wants them, even though he shouldn't, even though they're going to be taken away.

Peggy keeps adding images to the chopping block: when he was born, that she had never met his family but she knew that he adored them, that seeing him here without Steve feels so unnatural. He almost gets mad at her, giving him all these stories just so he can lose them, but that one time he lashed out at a handler they crated him with rats for a few days, so instead, though still involuntarily, he gets visibly anxious. Which works out for him, because she touches his remaining hand and promises him _soon_.

For some reason Bucky is not surprised to find that Peggy is a woman of her word (that Steve is a stubborn son of a bitch was already evidenced by his behavior in the helicarrier). It feels both like an eternity and only a few minutes have passed when Steve finally comes, leaning forward rather dangerously in that wheelchair he had to promise his nurse he wouldn't get out of in exchange for letting him leave the room.

Steve gapes for a beat into a long time. Bucky supposes that it might be strange for him _Bucky, oh God...it's me, it's Steve, come on, I thought you were dead_ and he tries to sit up, but he can't and Steve flushes dark red; he settles back down and Steve puts his face in his hands.

Bucky thinks Steve must be very hard to please. The thought should strike a chord of subservient unease in him, and it does, but it also makes the corner of his mouth quirk.

"Steve," Peggy whispers, and Bucky holds the expression for as long as it takes for Steve to look up. His cheek is twitching in protest of the unfamiliar gesture, and he's sure Steve notices it, but he gets an equally difficult smile back.

"You remember me?" Steve asks, a little huskily, and he watches Bucky struggle to answer. Total honesty had been expected of the Soldier, burned into his brain, even when it would lead to the worst of "resets". "You know me?" he tries again; a less loaded question.

"Affir--yes." Steve's breath catches, and Bucky feels a tugging in his throat and on his tongue, a little surge of bravery, of trust. Steve has never ordered him wiped, after all, at least not as far as he knows. And Peggy, he realizes, has kept all her promises so far; she doesn't seem like the type to play tricks. "Th...th-th-thought you were s-smmmaller."

Peggy makes a small noise. Steve's face crumples even as his chest shudders with something approaching laughter. He inches closer, pushing up against Bucky's bed as much as he can given the logistics of the chair and the bed frame. Peggy sits on the edge of the mattress at Bucky's feet, twisting her upper body uncomfortably so she can curl down to rest her head on his knees and reach out for Steve's hand; he takes it, and rests his other hand on top of Bucky's, ignoring the strap around his wrist in favor of praying his thanks that he's this lucky once more.

*

** _PRESIDENT OFFICIALLY PARDONS WINTER SOLDIER_**  
_Nine days after Hydra activity exposed, Ellis cites diminished capacity; "brainwashing" as cause for exoneration ___

__

__

*

Steve's never been more grateful to have a fan in his entire life, particularly one with such political clout. ("Probably no one is gonna try to get us to extradite him now," Natasha points out. "Not if the US already cleared him." Also not when the grassroots effort to #FreeBucky had spanned continents--coming strongest from the nations that had been represented in the SSR, but with sizeable numbers from the former Axis powers and even countries that the Commandos had never been to--and several governments needed to win back public favor like never before.)

It takes a few days before the news arrived for Bucky, despite the obvious signs that he isn't a security or flight risk, to be allowed to walk around, but he's still kept in Containment. Steve, though officially discharged, and Peggy, never admitted, refuse to leave the hospital despite multiple attempts by staff and loved ones alike to get them to go home.

Not that their friends could particularly blame them, so after a few token attempts to get them to at least go outside, Sharon, Natasha, and Sam go to the apartment to get clean clothes for them.

They come back with a few department store bags and the news that someone--whether as part of a raid during the hours that they were missing, or as vengeance after the Triskelion collapse--has trashed their apartment.

Steve and Peggy take the news rather well, though shock is a hell of a drug, even for supersoldiers. Thankfully they didn't have much of anything with monetary or sentimental value; most of their belongings from the 40s had been lost to time, and almost all of their new stuff was replaceable. Their biggest concern is the cats that hang around the apartment building, and Sam lets sympathy guilt him into spending an afternoon trapping two of the most frequent visitors; a pair of sisters named Pancakes and Waffles, who aren't vicious, but are extremely timid around strangers, and very fast.

"Guess I'll hang onto them until you guys find a place," Sam mutters, after Steve and Peggy thank him profusely. Natasha and Sharon do not offer their own apartments, nor do they explain why; Steve and Peggy have enough on their plates without worrying over the two other apartments destroyed by Hydra.

(Sam lets Sharon crash in his guest room, as his place is rather close to the nursing home to which Michael gets safely delivered. Natasha gets a hotel room.)

Natasha's warnings were timely. After appearing to be adjusting to his circumstances as best as can possibly be expected, Bucky suddenly begins to look sick. When asked, he slips back into the Soldier long enough to report that he's plagued by the thought of shooting a pregnant woman, an image that won't go away no matter how many of the other dream-memories he tries to switch focus to; he slips out again almost immediately, gets back into bed, and doesn't move for hours. Peggy and Steve eventually fall asleep in the chairs near him, only to be woken up by the sound of him sobbing, choking on the apology he's praying to ghosts.

"He has to know," Peggy whispers tearfully, when their and the staff's efforts to calm him down prove futile and they have to wait until he tortures himself into exhaustion, eventually passing out more than falling asleep. "He has to know it wasn't his fault, we have to...we have to show him what they did to him."

That won't do the trick by itself, Sam tells them when he pops in the next morning for a visit. It's an important part of the process, yes, though he _is_ worried that trying to explain "guilt" to someone whose grasp of "choice" is currently fluctuating, and who isn't fully convinced of the difference between daydreams and memories besides, might be fruitless. The exact details of his time with Hydra will probably either mean nothing to him, or cause him even more distress. Sam does know a few people who might know a few people who could possibly be able to help; he'll see what he can do. In the meantime, "sedatives, you guys. Just 'til he gets a better grasp of who he even is."

They try to take Sam's warning to heart, but the news that Bucky has been vindicated is nonetheless heartening in this regard. They give him the news carefully, watching as he tries to process "You'll be coming home with us" like "home" means something beyond a convenient place to pick off targets, and after he seems to accept it they step just outside of Containment to try to figure out where "home" is supposed to be now. Even cleaned up, their apartment is still one-bedroom, and apparently the couch didn't make it out alive. And despite Bucky's pardon, finding another apartment might be difficult; the first one had been outrageously expensive, and understandably so, considering the insurance issues...

"Excuse me? You have a phone call," breaks into their conversation, since their cell phones have hitherto not been allowed with them in Containment. "From Tony Stark."

Steve and Peggy glance at each other. "Did he say what the nature of the call is?" Peggy asks. 

"He said, and I quote, "tell them I'm gonna make them an offer they can't refuse"," the tech reports. 

They glance at each other a little harder. Peggy beats Steve to gesturing for the other person to take the call; Steve glares at her but ends up rolling his eyes and following the tech, allowing Peggy to stay within Bucky's field of vision (going for any length of time without at least one of them nearby has proven distressing for all of them).

"Hello...?" Steve asks cautiously, once the phone is in hand. 

"So I hear you're not getting your security deposit back."

"...How did--?"

"Local news."

"Local? You're in DC?"

"Well, I _was_. I made quite a spectacle of myself a couple days ago; you may have heard about it. I'm in New York now. By the way, apparently like 80% of my employees _and_ Pepper would have been stains on the carpet if you guys hadn't stopped the Apocalypse, so...thanks for that."

"You're...well I'm, I'm glad they made it out okay."

"Yeah, me too. Hiring's a pain in the ass. But anyway, we were talking about your homelessness."

"We're not _homeless_ , Tony."

"You are less one home. Hence, home _less_. Where you plannin' on stowin' your dearly un-departed boyfriend after the hospital finally kicks him out? Nowhere, that's where," Tony says quickly, before Steve can hang up on him. "Luckily, I've got a solution to your problems."

"Tony--"

"I read his files."

Tony has a certain tone of voice that brooks no argument, not because it's particularly intimidating, but because to do so would be to attack the rawest part of him. Steve is savvy enough to recognize it now, and not say anything.

"So with the Triskelion gone and the remaining 20% weeded out, my place has the dubious distinction of being the most secure building in the world. If you and your better, smarter, more attractive half...third...whatever wanna squirrel your missing link away from Hydra or the paps, I've got a suite with your name on it. Literally. STEVEN GRANT ROGERS is written on the door and everything."

"Tony, we can't possibly..."

"Yes, you can possibly, in fact. That's why I'm offering."

He's glad Tony can't see his face, because he's sure the comparisons to a fish would be as apt as they would be infuriating. "That's...this is... _beyond_ extremely generous..."

"Psh-shaw. It's not generosity, it's good publicity. The whole world loves you and your main squeezes, excepting a couple terrorists and pinko commies. Makes me look good if I give you a place to live _and_ an omnipresent AI to make sure nothing happens to any of you."

Steve is sure, as he presses the thumb and forefinger of his free hand against his suddenly watering eyes, that his silence is deafening. 

"Right, so, suite's ready to go whenever you are. I even painted some lamb's blood over the door. You know, to be extra safe."

Steve hasn't quite forgotten that the holiday was coming up, but the days since the Triskelion collapse have all bled into each other, and the fact that it's the 14th already comes as a bit of a surprise. "I...I have to talk to Peggy about it, you know."

"Sure. Call me when she says yes."

Steve huffs a small laugh. "I'll let you know what she thinks."

"I wait with bated breath. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some unleavened posterboard to hork down..."

Steve allows himself an actual laugh this time. "Enjoy."

"Yeah, chag sameach or whatever." Steve thinks to point out that Tony's enunciation was perfect, but decides not to. "Later."

"Wait, Tony--!"

"Yeah?" Tony asks, after a long beat of white noise. 

"I'm sorry," pours out of Steve's mouth like the water threatening to escape from his eyes. "I'm so sorry, Tony."

The line is quiet for a long time, and Tony hangs up, gently, before either of them have to search for any more words.

*

__

_Those who sow with tears_  
_will reap with songs of joy_  
_Those who go out weeping_  
_carrying seed to sow_  
_will return with songs of joy_  
_carrying sheaves with them_  


__

__

*

With the pardon in place, Bucky is no longer considered a risk. They move him out of Containment and into a regular room, one with a window and no restraints built into the bedframe itself. Bucky is no sooner settled in than they get another phone call, this time from Sam; one of his tenuous connections, a neurologist specializing in traumatized brains, happens to be based out of Manhattan. Another, a therapist with a background in complex PTSD, is moving there soon.

Steve laughs to find himself humming _[Dayenu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayenu)_ in response to all this and, when he catches Bucky studying him, switches to actually singing the chorus. Bucky clearly doesn't have a clue what he's saying, but seems enthralled nonetheless, and picks up on the melody quickly enough to hum-sing it back when prompted.

It reminds Steve with brilliant, dizzying clarity of the early 30s, and when Peggy comes in from using the phone to talk to Sharon, he looks at her with such hope in his eyes that she has to sit down, hard, under the weight of it. Enthusiasm to learn was one of Bucky's most endearing qualities--a welcome relief from the willful ignorance and hostility Steve had been otherwise surrounded by, and something that facilitated the bonding of two very bright young minds--and Hydra hadn't taken it from him.

Now that he's out of Containment, what had formerly been considered contraband is allowed in Bucky's room. Steve and Peggy, by turns, scare up the magazines littered throughout the hospital's various waiting rooms and borrow a few murder mysteries from the registrars' desks, and Bucky drinks them in like the liquid diet he's on until the staff feels comfortable letting him try solid food again (Hydra seemed to have primarily given him nutrients via IV; his first attempt in decades to have an actual meal ended in projectile vomiting, which seemed to spook, more than actually hurt, him). Science and science fiction had always been more Bucky's speed, however, and Sam helpfully directs them in the downloading of _[Mysterious Doctor Satan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_Doctor_Satan)_ and [_Buck Rogers_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers_\(serial\)) on the tablet that he re-loans them. The latter is a bit of a difficult watch for Steve and Peggy, but it strikes a chord with Bucky, who watches each chapter a few times over before finally remembering, and working up the nerve to say to Steve, that "We loved this."

Thus advised that anything could trigger a memory--later confirmed by the psychologist on staff--Peggy gets a large teddy bear from the gift shop and makes sure to talk about Rosemarie casually, until Bucky, if he doesn't recall anything solid about her, at least trusts that she wasn't a figment of his imagination. Worryingly, Bucky seems at first to take their attempts to get him to remember as orders to be obeyed, so they watch their tones like hawks and try to cheerfully supply information that he can't recall. Natasha suggests introducing something new to all of them, so there's at least one thing they'll all be on an even keel regarding; they choose Star Trek: the Original Series, and, for when they get tired of watching TV, the Troubleman soundtrack suggested by Sam.

Bucky's body twitches whenever they put on music. After some difficulties Steve and Peggy work out how to slip some [Annette Hanshaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Hanshaw) and [Bing Crosby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Crosby) into a playlist of otherwise new songs, and after a day or two the twitching smooths out into muted but rhythmic swaying.

He does disappear a few more times, not from the room, but from the present; he names marks that they have to consult the leaked files for, some of which keep them up at night as much as they do Bucky. Their efforts elsewhere to revive him seem to have influenced their ability to convince him that he had been physically unable to refuse assignments, and he appears to be able to handle the memory of the chair better than the thought of killing his victims. His breakdowns over it are quieter, in any case, and consequently so are theirs.

By Good Friday, though the expression is still a little uncanny, his cheeks have stopped twitching when he attempts to smile. The physician finds this out when she comes in to announce that if he can keep actual food down at some point today, they'll let him leave by Easter Sunday at least. Whether he manages to do so because of easy capability or sheer force of will is debatable, but since all three of them are eager to leave the hospital Steve and Peggy simply make a silent pact to further ease him into "real people" food once they're released.

They're on edge through all of Holy Saturday, trying to make plans for checking in with Michael, stopping in at Sam's to get the cats, and finalizing move-in arrangements with Tony, all while waiting for something to happen that will set Bucky back and leave him trapped here for longer. When a geneticist introducing herself as Helen Cho arrives looking serious, Steve is nearly forcibly reminded of the panic attacks of his childhood; maybe Bucky can pick up on this, because he remains very purposely calm.

"I simply thought you might want to know this," Helen says, once she notices how nervous the trio is. "You've heard, I presume, that there are no others...like you," she addresses Bucky. "I've been studying your blood samples, comparing them to yours," she directs at Steve and Peggy, "and...well, as a colleague of Dr. Strange I can admit this. There is very clearly magic present in all your serums."

"Yes, we've...sussed that out for ourselves," Peggy says.

"It _is_ a different kind of magic between you two and Mr. Barnes's, though," Helen says. "Zola's brand was...well, obviously it employed dark magic. One that Dr. Strange doesn't think anyone is supposed to be able to even wield without dying, let alone be... _forcibly_ infused with. So, I started looking for reasons as to why you might have...well, survived. And I found this." The papers she's had clutched to her chest are handed over. "Mr. Barnes...Bucky...has a gene present in his system that neither of you have in yours. One that I've never seen in anyone else, in fact. It might be safe to think of it as a...mutation, if you will. Obviously I can't confirm this without testing the...the others, but it's my hypothesis that this "mutation" is the reason why you survived infusion where the others did not."

"So...what, you're saying he's a mutant?" Steve asks, the first to speak through their shock. 

"...It's an apt descriptor. If I'm correct, of course. I won't know exactly what this gene does without more testing, which, I assume..."

"That's gonna be a no for now," Steve says, a little coolly, and Peggy presses her lips together, knowing that making Bucky's decisions must leave a rotten taste in Steve's mouth, and equally knowing that the man currently staring silently at the floor is conditioned to comply immediately, no matter how traumatizing the testing might turn out to be.

Helen nods. "I understand completely." She rises. "Please let me know if anything changes in the future."

She makes her way out amidst polite good-byes. Steve and Peggy immediately turn their focus to Bucky, who hasn't looked up. From their angles they can see his brow knitting, his tell when he's trying to remember something, and they elect to sit quietly, if tensely, while he tries to work whatever it is out.

Dinner is served before Bucky is able to speak about whatever he's thinking of. Thankfully, he's not so disturbed that he can't keep the few solids given him down; Steve puts some music on while they eat, which perks Bucky up slightly, though it doesn't draw him out of his contemplation. Same for the movie they put on after eating, and the overhead announcement that the lights are going to be turned off in five minutes, which cues Bucky to attempt to sleep in his bed while Steve and Peggy pretend to do the same in their chairs.

Pretending eventually gives way to the real thing, but it's a light sleep they fall into it, because the sound of mattress springs moving under Bucky as he sits up rouses them immediately. They try not to make it too obvious--just because they all need each other's presences doesn't mean Bucky needs to feel like he's being constantly monitored--and they're almost ready to believe they've gone unnoticed by the time Bucky finally breaks his silence.

"They wanted us to die."

"What do you mean, darling?" Peggy asks, the endearment slipping out instinctively.

"At the camp. At, at..."

"Kreichsberg," Steve supplies, his voice low. 

"They wanted us to die. They put us on those tables and they...they were trying to find ways to kill us, different ways. Slowly or quickly or painfully or...and everyone died. Everyone else died, but I didn't. They never stopped screaming and I wanted to die but I didn't."

" _Buck_." The mattress squeaks again as two additional bodies climb onto it. 

"I waited for you," Bucky says, glancing up at Steve. "Because you were going to die soon, too. So if I saw you that'd mean I was dead."

"Oh my _God_ ," Steve chokes, the image of Bucky's strange, giddy smile upon seeing him in the Kreichsberg lab painted garishly onto the inside of his screwed-up eyelids. On the other side of Bucky tears are already pouring down Peggy's face. 

"But I couldn't die and Zola said...Zola said that I...that I must be his...a kindred spirit." The strange fascination of regaining a memory starts to crumble under the horror of it. "That maybe there was something inside me that..." A new impression, more than a fully formed thought, presents itself, and he looks up at Steve again. "I was...I was born wrong, wasn't I?"

"You were born _perfect_ ," Steve almost spits, a defense against Bucky's worst fears about himself, an old vehemence that had gone to sleep but never died.

"There is _nothing_ wrong about, about whatever's inside of you," Peggy adds, saltwater dripping into her mouth as she speaks. "It brought you back to Steve, it brought you into _my_ life, and...and I refuse to think of that as bad. I refuse."

Bucky lapses into a silence so opaque that they can't tell if he's holding back an argument or trying to accept their verdict. Peggy looks at Steve, asking him if he thinks it's worth defying the warnings on this point; he gives her a short nod, and she turns around inches backward, slotting herself into Bucky's left side. As she tries to arrange her cheek comfortably on the stump that used to connect the metal arm to his body, he turns his head to look at her with such shock that he gasps, almost yelps when he feels Steve take his flesh hand.

"You know what I think," Peggy says, after Steve and Bucky stare each other down for awhile, and then Steve arranges himself so he can hold onto Bucky's hand more comfortably. "I think that, if this "mutation" does anything, it...they tried to kill you, but they couldn't. So this gene...maybe it...maybe it protects you from them, somehow. Defies them, in a way."

"Because you turned out like us, Buck, you see?" Steve offers softly. "The same...same strength, the same...capacity to survive."

"So maybe," Peggy drawls carefully, "maybe it does more than _defy_ the...the darkness, the dark magic. Maybe the mutation _changes_ the magic. Makes it turn from dark to light."

"That would be _incredibly_ fitting," Steve says, through the hard lump in his throat, as he runs his thumb over Bucky's knuckles. "Seeing how you've always done that for me."

Bucky inhales sharply, raggedly. He pulls his arm back but not free, tugging Steve closer to him; the first demand he's made in days, in decades. Steve gives it to him, adjusting his body so he mirrors Peggy's stance, except he has to tuck himself under Bucky's arm to make enough room. Another thing that reminds him of the 30s. He pushes himself closer, and reaches over to grab one of Peggy's hands, so their arms form a gate across Bucky's stomach.

After a moment, Bucky carefully pulls his arm out from around Steve and, despite the uncomfortable angle he has to maintain, sets his hand atop theirs.

They hold vigil like this as the sun rises, still and united. It's only when the room starts to fill with warmth and birdsong that Peggy's eyes start to droop closed, Steve's breathing starts to even out, and Bucky, sandwiched between freedom and hope, held by an embrace that he knows for sure now is more unyielding than shackles and fear and magic, decides that he wants to come back to life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rosemarie Handel/Elizabeth Schneider is from [Petshop of Horrors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Shop_of_Horrors). She was born in the 30s, and went into hiding with her family during the war. In December of 1942, upon realizing that they couldn't evade the Nazis for much longer, her father decided to leave her in hiding while the rest of them fled, and went to Count D to beg for a pet to protect Elizabeth. He came back with a child-sized teddy bear named Pappy, and instructed Elizabeth to identify herself as a Christian named Rosemarie Handel if she was ever found. (Pappy "protected Elizabeth" by shielding her from falling rubble during an air raid, and later by taking a bullet for her; a Torah had been sewn into his head, which caught the bullet.)
> 
> Since gas is an unwieldy weapon, the gases in Bucky's arm are for use in kidnappings and assassinations, rather than hand-to-hand combat. 
> 
> ["We'll flee to Siam / Or a bar in Amsterdam"](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-kbdCDeKSoI). I always thought this was a good theme song for Team Cap. 
> 
> If you've been with me for awhile you know that I am passionate about Enlisted!Bucky, but til now I hadn't really thought about how quickly he made rank. I wanna say that CATFA starts in April or May (based on their clothes and knowing the East Coast climate) of 1942 (because Steve voluntarily enlists, which he [would not have been able to do in 1943](http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-rejection-of-americas-volunteer.html#.WNnYhYVX9Rk)). So it's only been like six months since Pearl Harbor. I was advised that it's [perfectly plausible](http://sweethoneysempai.tumblr.com/post/158887326648/olgu-nii-sweethoneysempai-are-there-any-wwii) that Bucky enlisted before the war, made rank, and specialized in sniping, all before being deployed. Since part of my Bucky's motivation for enlisting was Steve's extended family in Lithuania, I see him joining in 1940, [after the Soviet Union, at that point an ally to Nazi Germany, annexed Lithuania on June 14th](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Lithuania#cite_note-9) and re-upping until the war started. ([Edita](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8619700/chapters/20213878) escaped Lithuania [ sometime between July of 1940 and June of 1941](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara#Lithuania), but she could not have feasibly notified Steve of this.) 
> 
> Speaking of timeline issues, it seems weird that Steve would have been on tour for over a year (from like May of '42 until November of '43)...it just feels kinda odd for Peggy to refer to him as "America's new hope" if he's been at this gig for 18 months already. It makes more sense to me that the Kreichsberg rescue happened in November of _'42_ , and the Howling Commandos were formed that winter. This also gives Peggy two years with Steve and Bucky, rather than just one.
> 
> I'm gonna link this version of ["Dayenu"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZgDNPGZ9Sg) just because the Maccabeats are a blessing to this earth.
> 
> To be clear, Peggy guessed right. Bucky's mutation changes dark magic into light magic when it's introduced to his body. The three Erskine serums were different combinations of light magic and biochemistry (and Steve was aided by physics a la the Vita-Ray Machine); the Zola serum is 100% dark magic. So when Zola was experimenting with dark magic as methods of torture and execution, Bucky's mutations converted the effects into something akin to the Erskine serums, keeping him alive and making him start to develop into something like Steve. (It did not spare him any pain, though, the same way Erskine Beta wasn't kind to Peggy.) In practice, it protects against agents that obey conventional laws of physics, but only indirectly, hence why Bucky's serum-influenced body survived the cyanide poisoning but was still damaged by it, and why Bucky could be mindwiped, but his brain kept getting close to recovering from it. 
> 
> Now, to decide if Wanda's powers are dark, light, or neutral magic...


End file.
